Chess history

Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid The game is played by millions of people worldwide. Chess is believed to be derived from the Indian game chaturanga some time before the 7th century. Chaturanga is also the likely ancestor of the Eastern strategy games xiangqi, janggi, and shogi. Chess reached Europe by the 9th century, due to the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The pieces assumed their current powers in Spain in the late 15th century with the introduction of “Mad Queen Chess”; the modern rules were standardized in the 19th century.

Play does not involve hidden information. 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 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. During the game, play typically involves making exchanges of one piece for an opponent’s similar piece, but also finding and engineering opportunities to trade advantageously, or to get a better position. In addition to checkmate, a player wins the game if the opponent resigns, or (in a timed game) runs out of time. There are also several ways that a game can end in a draw.

The first generally recognized World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886. Since 1948, the World Championship has been regulated by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), the game’s international governing body. FIDE also awards life-time master titles to skilled players, the highest of which is grandmaster. Many national chess organizations have a title system of their own. FIDE also organizes the Women’s World Championship, the World Junior Championship, the World Senior Championship, the Blitz and Rapid World Championships, and the Chess Olympiad, a popular competition among international teams. FIDE is a member of the International Olympic Committee, which can be considered as a recognition of chess as a sport. Several national sporting bodies (for example the Spanish Consejo Superior de Deportes) also recognize chess as a sport. Chess was included in the 2006 and 2010 Asian Games. There is also a Correspondence Chess World Championship and a World Computer Chess Championship. Online chess has opened amateur and professional competition to a wide and varied group of players.

Since the second half of the 20th century, chess engines (computers) have been programmed to play chess with increasing success, to the point where the strongest personal computers play at a higher level than the best human players. Since the 1990s, computer analysis has contributed significantly to chess theory, particularly in the endgame. The IBM computer Deep Blue was the first machine to overcome a reigning World Chess Champion in a match when it defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997. The rise of strong chess engines runnable on hand-held devices has led to increasing concerns about cheating during tournaments. There are many variants of chess that utilize different rules, pieces, or boards. One of these, Chess960, incorporates standard rules but employs 960 different possible starting positions, thus negating any advantage in opening preparation. Chess960 has gained widespread popularity as well as some FIDE recognition.

-source:wikipidea

Rules

The rules of chess are published by FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs), chess’s international governing body, in its Handbook. Rules published by national governing bodies, or by unaffiliated chess organizations, commercial publishers, etc., may differ. FIDE’s rules were most recently revised in 2017.

Set up position

Movement of pieces

• In chess the first move is played by white
• king moves one square in any direction. The king also has a special move called castling that involves also moving a rook
• A rook can move any number of squares along a rank or file, but cannot leap over other pieces. Along with the king, a rook is involved during the king’s castling move.
• A bishop can move any number of squares diagonally, but cannot leap over other pieces.
• The queen combines the power of a rook and bishop and can move any number of squares along a rank, file, or diagonal, but cannot leap over other pieces
• A knight moves to any of the closest squares that are not on the same rank, file, or diagonal. (Thus the move forms an “L”-shape: two squares vertically and one square horizontally, or two squares horizontally and one square vertically.) The knight is the only piece that can leap over other pieces.
• A pawn can move forward to the unoccupied square immediately in front of it on the same file, or on its first move it can advance two squares along the same file, provided both squares are unoccupied (black dots in the diagram); or the pawn can capture an opponent’s piece on a square diagonally in front of it on an adjacent file, by moving to that square (black “x”s). A pawn has two special moves: the en passant capture and promotion

This image if from wikipedia

Two special moves in chess

Castling

Once in every game, each king can make a special move, known as castling. Castling consists of moving the king two squares along the first rank toward a rook (that is on the player’s first rank and then placing the rook on the last square that the king just crossed. Castling is permissible if the following conditions are met:

• Neither the king nor the rook have previously moved during the game.
• There are no pieces between the king and the rook.
• The king cannot be incheck, nor can the king pass through any square that is under attack by an enemy piece, or move to a square that would result in check. (Note that castling is permitted if the rook is attacked, or if the rook crosses an attacked square.)

En passant

When a pawn makes a two-step advance from its starting position and there is an opponent’s pawn on a square next to the destination square on an adjacent file, then the opponent’s pawn can capture it en passant (“in passing”), moving to the square the pawn passed over. This can only be done on the very next turn, otherwise the right to do so is forfeited.

End game

Draw

There are several ways games can end in a draw:

Draw by agreement: Draws are most commonly reached by mutual agreement between the players. The correct procedure is to verbally offer the draw, make a move, then start the opponent’s clock. Traditionally, players have been allowed to agree to a draw at any point in the game, occasionally even without playing a move; in recent years efforts have been made to discourage short draws, for example by forbidding draw offers before move thirty.

Stalemate: The player whose turn it is to move has no legal move and is not in check.

Threefold repetition of position: This most commonly occurs when neither side is able to avoid repeating moves without incurring a disadvantage. In this situation, either player can claim a draw; this requires the players to keep a valid written record of the game so that the claim can be verified by the arbiter if challenged. The three occurrences of the position need not occur on consecutive moves for a claim to be valid. FIDE rules make no mention of perpetual check; this is merely a specific type of draw by threefold repetition.

Fifty-move rule: If during the previous 50 moves no pawn has been moved and no capture has been made, either player can claim a draw. There are several known endgames where it is possible to force a mate but it requires more than 50 moves before a pawn move or capture is made; examples include some endgames with two knights against a pawn and some pawnless endgames such as queen against two bishops. Historically, FIDE has sometimes revised the 50-move rule to make exceptions for these endgames, but these have since been repealed. Some correspondence chess organizations do not enforce the fifty-move rule.

Fivefold repetition of position: Similar to the threefold-repetition rule, but in this case neither player needs to claim the draw; thus a tournament director can intervene and declare the game to be drawn. This is a relatively recent (2014) addition to the FIDE rules.

Seventy-five-move rule: Similar to the fifty-move rule; however, if the final move in the sequence resulted in checkmate, this takes precedence. As with the fivefold-repetition rule, this applies independently of claims by the players, and allows a tournament director to intervene. This rule likewise is a recent addition to the FIDE rules.

Insufficient material: If neither player has a theoretical possibility to checkmate the opponent; for example, if a player has only the king and a knight left, and the opponent has only the king left, checkmate is impossible and the game is drawn by this rule. On the other hand, if both players have a king and a knight left, there is a highly unlikely yet theoretical possibility of checkmate, so this rule does not apply.

Draw on time: In games with a time control, the game is drawn if a player is out of time and the opponent has no theoretical possibility to checkmate the player.

Win

Games can be won in the following ways:

Checkmate: The player whose turn it is to move is in check and has no legal move to escape check.

Resignation: Either player may resign, conceding the game to the opponent. It is usually considered poor etiquette to play on in a hopeless position, and for this reason high-level games rarely end in checkmate.

Win on time: In games with a time control, a player wins if the opponent runs out of time, even if the opponent has a superior position, as long as the player has a theoretical possibility to checkmate the opponent.

Forfeit: A player who cheats, violates the rules, or violates the rules specified for the particular tournament, can be forfeited. In high-level tournaments, players have been forfeited for such things as:

arriving late for the game (even by a matter of seconds);

receiving a call or text on a cell phone;

refusing to undergo a drug test;

refusing to undergo a body search for electronic devices;

unsporting behavior (e.g. refusing to shake hands with the opponent).

The following is an example of Checkmate

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-The above information’s has been extracted from the following site’s: – wikipedia , The official FIDE site and the Images are from positions created on Lucas chess UCI. The Template is from templatemo