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 generically 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; then moves alternate. The object of the game is to checkmate (threaten with inescapable capture) the enemy king. There are also 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 modern rules of chess 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, with millions of players worldwide. (Full article...)

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A proof game is a type of retrograde analysis chess problem. The solver must construct a game starting from the initial chess position, which ends with a given position (thus proving that that position is reachable) after a specified number of moves. A proof game is called a shortest proof game if no shorter solution exists. In this case the task is simply to construct a shortest possible game ending with the given position.

When published, shortest proof games will normally present the solver with a diagram - which is the final position to be reached - and a caption such as "SPG in 9.0". "SPG" here is short for "shortest proof game" and the "9.0" indicates how many moves must be played to reach the position; 9.0 means the position is reached after black's ninth move, 7.5 would mean the position is reached after seven and a half moves (that is, after white's eighth move) and so on. Sometimes the caption may be more verbose, for example "Position after white's seventh move. How did the game go?". (Full article...)

List of selected articles

General images

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

Image 1The 12th-century Lewis chessmen in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland (from History of chess)
Image 2World Champions José Raúl Capablanca (left) and Emanuel Lasker in 1925 (from History of chess)
Image 3Bobby Fischer vs. Mikhail Tal (from History of chess)
Image 4Animation of the Immortal Game, in which Adolf Anderssen, playing white, beat Lionel Kieseritzky in June 1851 (from History of chess)
Image 5Cocowood chess set (Philippines craft) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 6Chess game between Tha'ālibī and Bākhazarī, 1896 painting by Ludwig Deutsch (from History of chess)
Image 7Stamp of the USSR devoted to the accomplished Estonian player and analyst Paul Keres, 1991 (from History of chess)
Image 8Lucas van Leyden, c. 1508, The Game of Chess, oil on oak, 27 x 35 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 9John Lavery, 1929, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 10RZA at a Hip Hop Chess Federation Tournament (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 12A Chess Dispute (1903) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 13Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from History of chess)
Image 14The Chess Players by Henry Fox Talbot, 1847 (from History of chess)
Image 15Two Georgian writers, Ilia Chavchavadze and Ivane Machabeli, playing chess in Saint Petersburg, 1873 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 16Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official World Chess Champion (from History of chess)
Image 17In 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 18Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, 1555, National Museum, Poznań, Poland (from Chess in the arts)
Image 19Current World Champion Ding Liren (from History of chess)
Image 20An illustration from a Persian manuscript "A treatise on chess". The Ambassadors from India present the Chatrang to Khosrow I Anushirwan, "Immortal Soul", King of Persia (from History of chess)
Image 21Paris Bordone, c. 1545, Chess players, oil on canvas, Mailand, Wohnhaus (from Chess in the arts)
Image 22Final match of the 1575 tournament in El Escorial. Painting by Luigi Mussini. (from History of chess)
Image 23Honoré Daumier, 1863, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 24Krishna and Radha playing chaturanga on an 8×8 Ashtāpada (from History of chess)
Image 25These seven ivory chess pieces are the oldest-known, dating to about 700 CE. The ivory came from India. They were excavated in 1977 by archaeologist Yuriy Buryakov, at Afrasiyab in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. They are housed today at the Samarkand State Museum. Taken during a loan of the pieces to the Silk Roads Exhibition at the British Museum (from History of chess)
Image 26Thomas Eakins, 1876, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 27Some 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 28Shams-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 29Iranian courtiers of the Qajar dynasty playing chess in Mazandaran. (from History of chess)
Image 30Persian manuscript from the 14th century describing how an ambassador from India brought chess to the Persian court (from History of chess)
Image 31Karel van Mander, 1600 (attributed to), Les joueurs d'échecs (from Chess in the arts)
Image 32Edward Harrison May, 1867, Lady Howe mating Benjamin Franklin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 33Iranian shatranj set, glazed fritware, 12th century, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (from History of chess)
Image 34Liberale da Verona, The Chess Players, c. 1475 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 35Antonis Mor, 1549, Von Sachsen vs. a Spaniard (from Chess in the arts)
Image 36Gustaf Lundberg, 1775, Portrait of Gustav Badin, pastel, 74 x 57 cm, Nationalmuseum, Sweden (from Chess in the arts)
Image 37Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 38Bauhaus chess set by Josef Hartwig (from Chess in the arts)
Image 39Chess Set by Man Ray (from Chess in the arts)
Image 40Richard Creifelds, c. 1886, The Veterans, Brooklyn Museum (from Chess in the arts)
Image 41Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess (1473) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 42Niccolò di Pietro, 1413–15, The Conversion of Saint Augustin, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (from Chess in the arts)

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FIDE world ranking

Rank	Player	Rating
1	Magnus Carlsen	2831
2	Fabiano Caruana	2805
3	Hikaru Nakamura	2802
4	Arjun Erigaisi	2801
5	Gukesh Dommaraju	2783
6	Nodirbek Abdusattorov	2777
7	Alireza Firouzja	2763
8	Ian Nepomniachtchi	2755
9	Wei Yi	2753
10	Viswanathan Anand	2750
11	Levon Aronian	2747
12	Wesley So	2747
13	Leinier Dominguez	2741
14	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	2740
15	Lê Quang Liêm	2739
16	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	2738
17	R Praggnanandhaa	2737
18	Hans Niemann	2734
19	Anish Giri	2733
20	Vincent Keymer	2733

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