Portal:Chess

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Welcome to the Chess Portal

Introduction

Left to right: white king, black rook, black queen, white pawn, black knight, white bishop

Chess is a board game for two players. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess).

Chess is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no elements of chance. It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid. The players, referred to as "White" and "Black", each control sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. White moves first, followed by Black. The game is won by checkmating the opponent's king, i.e. threatening it with inescapable capture. There are several ways a game can end in a draw.

The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. After its introduction in Persia, it spread to the Arab world and then to Europe. The rules of chess as they are known today emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, with standardization and universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games and is played by millions of people worldwide. (Full article...)

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Fischer in 1972

Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won with an 11–0 score, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. Qualifying for the 1972 World Championship, Fischer swept matches with Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen by 6–0 scores. After winning another qualifying match against Tigran Petrosian, Fischer won the title match against Boris Spassky of the USSR, in Reykjavík, Iceland. Publicized as a Cold War confrontation between the US and USSR, the match attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since.

In 1975, Fischer refused to defend his title when an agreement could not be reached with FIDE, chess's international governing body, over the match conditions. Consequently, the Soviet challenger Anatoly Karpov was named World Champion by default. Fischer subsequently disappeared from the public eye, though occasional reports of erratic behavior emerged. In 1992, he reemerged to win an unofficial rematch against Spassky. It was held in Yugoslavia, which was under a United Nations embargo at the time. His participation led to a conflict with the US government, which warned Fischer that his participation in the match would violate an executive order imposing US sanctions on Yugoslavia. The US government ultimately issued a warrant for his arrest; subsequently, Fischer lived as an émigré. In 2004, he was arrested in Japan and held for several months for using a passport that the US government had revoked. Eventually, he was granted Icelandic citizenship by a special act of the Icelandic parliament, allowing him to live there until his death in 2008. (Full article...)

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General images

The following are images from various chess-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Bobby Fischer vs. Mikhail Tal (from History of chess)
Image 2Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, 1555, National Museum, Poznań, Poland (from Chess in the arts)
Image 3Stamp of the USSR devoted to the accomplished Estonian player and analyst Paul Keres, 1991 (from History of chess)
Image 4Lucas van Leyden, c. 1508, The Game of Chess, oil on oak, 27 x 35 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 5John Lavery, 1929, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 6In 1975, former President of Pakistan Zulfi Bhutto gifted a carved ivory set of chess to the former United States President Gerald Ford. (from Chess in the arts)
Image 7Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 8Bauhaus chess set by Josef Hartwig (from Chess in the arts)
Image 9Animation of the Immortal Game, in which Adolf Anderssen, playing white, beat Lionel Kieseritzky in June 1851 (from History of chess)
Image 10Some of the earliest examples of chess-related art are medieval illustrations accompanying books or manuscripts, such as this chess problem from the 1283 Libro de los juegos. (from Chess in the arts)
Image 11Hans Muelich, 1552, Duke Albrecht V. of Bavaria and his wife Anna of Austria playing chess (from Chess in the arts)
Image 12Thomas Eakins, 1876, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 13Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official World Chess Champion (from History of chess)
Image 14RZA at a Hip Hop Chess Federation Tournament (from Chess in the arts)
Image 15Richard Creifelds, c. 1886, The Veterans, Brooklyn Museum (from Chess in the arts)
Image 16Gustaf Lundberg, 1775, Portrait of Gustav Badin, pastel, 74 x 57 cm, Nationalmuseum, Sweden (from Chess in the arts)
Image 17Iranian shatranj set, glazed fritware, 12th century, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (from History of chess)
Image 18Shams-i Tabrīzī as portrayed in a 1500 painting in a page of a copy of Rumi's poem dedicated to Shams (from History of chess)
Image 19The 12th-century Lewis chessmen in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland (from History of chess)
Image 20World Champions José Raúl Capablanca (left) and Emanuel Lasker in 1925 (from History of chess)
Image 21Niccolò di Pietro, 1413–15, The Conversion of Saint Augustin, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (from Chess in the arts)
Image 22Edward Harrison May, 1867, Lady Howe mating Benjamin Franklin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 23Chess game between Tha'ālibī and Bākhazarī, 1896 painting by Ludwig Deutsch (from History of chess)
Image 24Final match of the 1575 tournament in El Escorial. Painting by Luigi Mussini. (from History of chess)
Image 25Iranian courtiers of the Qajar dynasty playing chess in Mazandaran. (from History of chess)
Image 26Karel van Mander, 1600 (attributed to), Les joueurs d'échecs (from Chess in the arts)
Image 27Honoré Daumier, 1863, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 28Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess (1473) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 29Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from History of chess)
Image 30Krishna and Radha playing chaturanga on an 8×8 Ashtāpada (from History of chess)
Image 31Chess Set by Man Ray (from Chess in the arts)
Image 32A Chess Dispute (1903) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 33Current World Champion Ding Liren (from History of chess)
Image 34Antonis Mor, 1549, Von Sachsen vs. a Spaniard (from Chess in the arts)
Image 35The Chess Players by Henry Fox Talbot, 1847 (from History of chess)
Image 36Persian manuscript from the 14th century describing how an ambassador from India brought chess to the Persian court (from History of chess)
Image 37Paris Bordone, c. 1545, Chess players, oil on canvas, Mailand, Wohnhaus (from Chess in the arts)
Image 38Liberale da Verona, The Chess Players, c. 1475 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 39Georgian writers, Ilia Chavchavadze and Ivane Machabeli playing chess in Saint Petersburg, 1873 (from Chess in the arts)

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FIDE world ranking

Rank	Player	Rating
1	Magnus Carlsen	2832
2	Hikaru Nakamura	2802
3	Fabiano Caruana	2796
4	Erigaisi Arjun	2778
5	Ian Nepomniachtchi	2770
6	Nodirbek Abdusattorov	2769
7	Gukesh D	2763
8	Praggnanandhaa R	2757
9	Wesley So	2757
10	Wei Yi	2755
11	Viswanathan Anand	2751
12	Leinier Dominguez	2748
13	Ding Liren	2745
14	Anish Giri	2745
15	Alireza Firouzja	2744
16	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	2733
17	Quang Liem Le	2731
18	Levon Aronian	2729
19	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	2726
20	Parham Maghsoodloo	2725

Did you know...

... that Magnus Carlsen, the current World Chess Champion, resigned a recent tournament game after only one move?

Reviewed articles

Featured articles	Good articles
First-move advantage in chess	42nd Chess Olympiad	Goryachkina, Aleksandra
Gossip, George H. D.	43rd Chess Olympiad	Guramishvili, Sopiko
List of female chess grandmasters	Abdumalik, Zhansaya	Kazarian, Anna-Maja
Mechanical Turk	Alekhine, Alexander	Kristjánsson, Stefán
44th Chess Olympiad	Anderssen, Adolf	Lasker, Emanuel
	Belenkaya, Dina	Mammadzada, Gunay
	Bindrich, Falko	Milner-Barry, Stuart
	Blübaum, Matthias	Modern Benoni
	Budapest Gambit	Muzychuk, Anna
	Bughouse chess	Nadanian, Ashot
	Carlsen, Magnus	Rudolf, Anna
	Chess in Armenia	Rules of chess
	Cramling, Anna	Staunton, Howard
	Deep Blue (Chess computer)	Steinitz, Wilhelm
	En passant	Turochamp
	Endgame tablebase	World Chess Championship 1972
	Fischer, Bobby	Zhou, Qiyu