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 typically 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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The Göttingen manuscript is the earliest known work devoted entirely to modern chess. It is a Latin text of 33 pages held at the University of Göttingen. A quarto parchment manuscript of 33 pages, ff. 1–15a are a discussion of twelve chess openings, f. 16 is blank, and ff. 17–31b are a selection of thirty chess problems, one on each page with a diagram and solution. Authorship and exact date of the manuscript are unknown. Similarities to Lucena's Repeticion de Amores e Arte de Axedres con CL iuegos de partido (c. 1497) have led some scholars to surmise that it was written by Lucena or that it was one of Lucena's sources. Although the manuscript is generally assumed to be older than Lucena's work, this is not established. The manuscript has been ascribed possible writing dates of 1500–1505 or 1471.

The manuscript is exclusively devoted to modern chess (using the modern rules of movement for the pawn, bishop, and queen, although castling had not yet taken its current form), and no mention is made of the earlier form. The rules are not explained, so the manuscript must have been written at a time and place when the new rules were well established, or it was addressed to a player familiar with the new rules. The addressee of the manuscript is not named, but was evidently a nobleman of high rank. Some particulars of the manuscript suggest that the author was from Spain or Portugal and that it was copied at some point in France, although this is not certain.

This article uses algebraic notation to describe chess moves.

(Full article...)

List of selected articles

General images

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

Image 1Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 2Stamp of the USSR devoted to the accomplished Estonian player and analyst Paul Keres, 1991 (from History of chess)
Image 3Gustaf Lundberg, 1775, Portrait of Gustav Badin, pastel, 74 x 57 cm, Nationalmuseum, Sweden (from Chess in the arts)
Image 4Karel van Mander, 1600 (attributed to), Les joueurs d'échecs (from Chess in the arts)
Image 5Iranian shatranj set, glazed fritware, 12th century, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (from History of chess)
Image 6Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess (1473) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 7Edward Harrison May, 1867, Lady Howe mating Benjamin Franklin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 8In 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 9Chess game between Tha'ālibī and Bākhazarī, 1896 painting by Ludwig Deutsch (from History of chess)
Image 10Krishna and Radha playing chaturanga on an 8×8 Ashtāpada (from History of chess)
Image 11Final match of the 1575 tournament in El Escorial. Painting by Luigi Mussini. (from History of chess)
Image 12Some 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 13The 12th-century Lewis chessmen in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland (from History of chess)
Image 14Honoré Daumier, 1863, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 15Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from History of chess)
Image 16Georgian writers, Ilia Chavchavadze and Ivane Machabeli playing chess in Saint Petersburg, 1873 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 17World Champions José Raúl Capablanca (left) and Emanuel Lasker in 1925 (from History of chess)
Image 18Lucas van Leyden, c. 1508, The Game of Chess, oil on oak, 27 x 35 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 19Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, 1555, National Museum, Poznań, Poland (from Chess in the arts)
Image 20Iranian courtiers of the Qajar dynasty playing chess in Mazandaran. (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 22Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official World Chess Champion (from History of chess)
Image 23Liberale da Verona, The Chess Players, c. 1475 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 24Richard Creifelds, c. 1886, The Veterans, Brooklyn Museum (from Chess in the arts)
Image 25Thomas Eakins, 1876, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 26Animation of the Immortal Game, in which Adolf Anderssen, playing white, beat Lionel Kieseritzky in June 1851 (from History of chess)
Image 27John Lavery, 1929, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 28RZA at a Hip Hop Chess Federation Tournament (from Chess in the arts)
Image 29Shams-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 30Antonis Mor, 1549, Von Sachsen vs. a Spaniard (from Chess in the arts)
Image 31Chess Set by Man Ray (from Chess in the arts)
Image 32A Chess Dispute (1903) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 33The Chess Players by Henry Fox Talbot, 1847 (from History of chess)
Image 34Bobby Fischer vs. Mikhail Tal (from History of chess)
Image 35Current World Champion Ding Liren (from History of chess)
Image 36Bauhaus chess set by Josef Hartwig (from Chess in the arts)
Image 37Persian manuscript from the 14th century describing how an ambassador from India brought chess to the Persian court (from History of chess)
Image 38Hans Muelich, 1552, Duke Albrecht V. of Bavaria and his wife Anna of Austria playing chess (from Chess in the arts)
Image 39Paris Bordone, c. 1545, Chess players, oil on canvas, Mailand, Wohnhaus (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	2793
4	Arjun Erigaisi	2778
5	Ian Nepomniachtchi	2767
6	Gukesh D	2766
7	Nodirbek Abdusattorov	2762
8	Wei Yi	2762
9	Alireza Firouzja	2751
10	Wesley So	2751
11	Viswanathan Anand	2751
12	Praggnanandhaa R	2749
13	Leinier Dominguez	2748
14	Anish Giri	2746
15	Ding Liren	2745
16	Quang Liem Le	2741
17	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	2733
18	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	2733
19	Levon Aronian	2729
20	Parham Maghsoodloo	2723

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