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Table tennis and Chess
Chess
editChess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid.[1] The game is played by millions of people worldwide.Each player begins with 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. Each of the six piece types moves differently, with the most powerful being the queen and the least powerful the pawn. The objective is to checkmate[note 1] the opponent's king by placing it under an inescapable threat of capture. To this end, a player's pieces are used to attack and capture the opponent's pieces, while supporting each other. In addition to checkmate, the game can be won by voluntary resignation of the opponent, which typically occurs when too much material is lost, or checkmate appears unavoidable. A game can also in several ways end in a draw. FIDE awards titles to skilled players, the highest of which is grandmaster. Many national chess organizations also have a title system; however, these are not recognized by FIDE.There are also many chess variants which utilize different rules, pieces, or boards. One of these, Chess960 (originally "Fischerandom"), has gained widespread popularity as well as limited FIDE recognition.
Rules
editThe player with the white pieces always moves first. After the first move, players alternately move one piece per turn (except for castling, when two pieces are moved). Pieces are moved to either an unoccupied square or one occupied by an opponent's piece, which is captured and removed from play. With the sole exception of en passant, all pieces capture by moving to the square that the opponent's piece occupies. A player may not make any move that would put or leave the player's own king under attack. A player cannot "pass"; at each turn one must make a legal move (this is the basis for the finesse called zugzwang).If the player to move has no legal move, the game is over; it is either a checkmate (a loss for the player with no legal moves) if the king is under attack, or a stalemate (a draw) if the king is not.Each chess piece has its own way of moving. In the diagrams, the dots mark the squares where the piece can move if there are no intervening piece(s) of either color.
Table tennis
editTable tennis, also known as ping pong, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball back and forth across a table using a small bat. The game takes place on a hard table divided by a net. Except for the initial serve, the rules are generally as follows: players must allow a ball played toward them to bounce one time on their side of the table, and must return it so that it bounces on the opposite side at least once. A point is scored when a player fails to return the ball within the rules. Play is fast and demands quick reactions. Spinning the ball alters its trajectory and limits an opponent's options, giving the hitter a great advantage.Table tennis is governed by the worldwide organization International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), founded in 1926. ITTF currently includes 220 member associations.[3] The table tennis official rules are specified in the ITTF handbook.[4] Table tennis has been an Olympic sport since 1988,[5] with several event categories. From 1988 until 2004, these were men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles and women's doubles. Since 2008, a team event has been played instead of the doubles.
Rules
editAfter the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the ITTF instituted several rule changes that were aimed at making table tennis more viable as a televised spectator sport.[16][17] First, the older 38 mm (1.50 in) balls were officially replaced by 40 mm (1.57 in) balls in October 2000.[7][18] This increased the ball's air resistance and effectively slowed down the game. By that time, players had begun increasing the thickness of the fast sponge layer on their paddles, which made the game excessively fast and difficult to watch on television. A few months later, the ITTF changed from a 21-point to an 11-point scoring system (and the serve rotation was reduced from five points to two), effective in September 2001.[7] This was intended to make games more fast-paced and exciting. The ITTF also changed the rules on service to prevent a player from hiding the ball during service, in order to increase the average length of rallies and to reduce the server's advantage, effective in 2002.[19] For the opponent to have time to realize a serve is taking place, the ball must be tossed a minimum of 16 cm in the air. The ITTF states that all events after July 2014 are played with a new poly material ball.