Portal:Chess/Selected article archive
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[edit] July 25, 2006 - February 9, 2007
The Philidor position (known also as the third rank defense) is a chess endgame the reaching of which produces, with perfect play and unlike certain other rook-and-pawn endgames, a draw for the defending player, who possesses a rook and king against a player with a rook, king, and pawn, thought to have been first analyzed in 1777 by French chess master, music composer, and chess theoretician François-André Danican Philidor, pictured, on the cover of his 1749 treatise Analyse du jeu des Échecs.
Where neither an opponent's pawn nor his king has yet reached the defender's third rank, a defender, irrespective of the file on which his opponent's pawn would promote, seeks to place his king on the square on which such promotion would occur (referred to most often as the queening square, inasmuch as most promotions are to queens) or one directly thereto, attendant to which he seeks to place his rook on that third rank, such that the opposing king, lest he should incur check, may not progress farther.
Should the opponent seek to permit his king to pass by moving his rook onto the same rank on which the defender's rook sits, the defender may readily exchange rooks; in the absence of the rooks, the king-and-pawn-versus-king endgame is drawn, in view of the defender's having the opposition. Should the opponent seek to effect a simple rook checkmate by moving his pawn and thereafter his king to the third rank, the defender may retreat his rook to the seventh or eighth rank, after which he may offer checks repeatedly, toward a draw, often by threefold repetition or under the fifty-move rule.
[edit] July 3, 2006 - July 25, 2006
A series of interzonal tournaments composed the third of five stages in the cycle implemented by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs, the sport's governing body, in 1948, just after the death of reigining world champion Russian Alexander Alekhine, to determine the world chess champion; the cycle remained unchanged until 1996, when a schism betwixt FIDE and the Professional Chess Association as to how properly to award the world championship developed–a single-elimination format has been used bienially since 1999 to determine a FIDE world champion.
Early in each three-year cycle, each FIDE-member nation would conduct a national championship, the winner (or, for larger nations, such as the United States and Soviet Union, the top three finishers) of which would proceed to a zonal tournament, in which they would play a round robin tournament against players from proximate nations; the strength and number of FIDE-rated players determined the number of nations to be grouped, such that nations from South and Central America comprised a single zone whilst those in Europe were divided into several zones.
At the interzonal level, the top-performing players from each zonal contested a round robin tournament, the top six to twelve finishers of which advanced to a candidates tournament, in which they, joined by the top two finishers from the candidates tournaments contested during the previous cycle, competed in an additional round robin (prior to 1965) or seeded knockout tournament (in 1965 and thereafter, with each mini-match's consisting of four to eight games); the winner of the candidates tournament proceeded to a 24-game world championship match with the titleholder.
Image:David Ionovich Bronstein.jpg
The first interzonal, played in Saltsjobaden, Sweden, featured all zonal winners and saw ten players, led by Grandmasterss David Bronstein (Soviet Union), pictured, László Szabó (Hungary), and Isaac Boleslavsky (Soviet Union), advance to candidates competition in Budapest, Hungary; Bronstein and Boleslavksy would go on to finish two points clear of future world champion Grandmaster Vasily Smyslov, and, after defeating Boleslavksy in a fourteen-game playoff, Bronstein would draw a 24-game match with Mikhail Botvinnik, whereupon Botvinnik retained his title.
[edit] May 26, 2006 - July 3, 2006
Shatranj is an old two-player strategic game from which modern chess is thought to have evolved. The game came to Persia from India, where it was known as chaturanga, around the seventh century CE. Originally known as chatrang, and believed to have been very similar to chaturanga, shatranj took on its present name when it spread throughout the Muslim world. The game was popular for nearly 1000 years before the ascendance of modern chess...
[edit] March 11, 2006 - May 26, 2006
Xiangqi (listen)), is a two-player Chinese game in a family of strategic board games of which Western chess, Indian chaturanga, Japanese shogi, and the more similar Korean janggi are also members. The first character, xiàng, here has the meaning "image" or "representational", hence Xiangqi can be literally translated as "representational chess". Although the character can also mean elephant, the game is more appropriately and more commonly called Chinese chess in the West.
[edit] February 24, 2006 - March 11, 2006
The idea of creating a chess-playing machine dates back to the eighteenth century. Around 1769, the chess playing automaton called The Turk became famous before being exposed as a hoax. After that, the field of mechanical chess research languished until the advent of the digital computer in the 1950s. Since then, chess enthusiasts and computer engineers have built, with increasing degrees of seriousness and success, chess-playing machines and computer programs.
[edit] December 24, 2005 - February 24, 2006
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The Sicilian Defence is a chess opening which begins with:
This is the most popular response to 1.e4 at the master level. Black immediately fights for the centre, but by attacking from the c-file (instead of mirroring White's move) he creates an asymmetrical position that leads to complicated situations. Typically, White has the initiative on the kingside while Black obtains counterplay on the queenside, particularly on the c-file after the exchange of Black's c-pawn for White's d-pawn.
The opening was named by Gioacchino Greco in the 17th century.
[edit] September 4, 2005 - December 24, 2005
A proof game is a type of chess problem in which the solver must construct a game, starting from the initial position in chess, which ends with a given position after a given number of moves. A proof game is called a shortest proof game if no shorter solution exists, in which case sometimes no number of moves is given and the task is simply to construct the shortest possible game ending with the given position. If you win you get to keep all of the persons players
[edit] August 22, 2005 – September 4, 2005
In chess the fianchetto (Italian "little flanking") is a pattern of development wherein a bishop is developed to the second rank of the adjacent knight file, the knight pawn having been moved one or two squares forward. In Italian, fianchetto is pronounced with a hard k sound as in "cat", but many English-speaking chess players mispronounce this word with a ch sound as in "church".
[edit] August 8, 2005 – August 21, 2005
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. While there has never been a female World Champion, women are eligible to hold the title. In addition, there is a separate world championship for women only, for the title of "Woman's World Champion", and separate competitions and titles for juniors, seniors and computers.
[edit] July 19, 2005 – August 7, 2005
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| "Excelsior" by Sam Loyd. White to move and mate in five "with the least likely piece or pawn". See "Excelsior" for the solution. |
A chess problem, formally called a chess composition, is a puzzle set by somebody using chess pieces on a chess board, presenting the solver with a particular task to be achieved. For instance, a position might be given with the instruction that white is to move first, and checkmate black in two moves against any possible defence. A person who creates such problems is known as a "composer". There is a good deal of specialised jargon used in chess problems; see chess problem terminology for a list.
Exactly what constitutes a chess problem is, to a degree, open to debate. However, the kinds of things published in the problem section of chess magazines, in specialist chess problem magazines, and in collections of chess problems in book form, tend to have certain common characteristics:
- The position is composed - that is, it has not been taken from an actual game, but has been invented for the specific purpose of providing a problem.
- There is a specific aim, for example, to checkmate black within a specified number of moves.
- There is a theme and the problem is aesthetically pleasing. A problem's theme is an underlying idea, giving coherence and beauty to its solution.
[edit] July 12, 2005 – July 18, 2005
The king (
) is the most important piece in the game of chess. The king represents the prize the opposition seeks to win. If a player's king is threatened and cannot escape capture, the king is said to be in checkmate, and the player which own's said king loses the game.
In a conventional game of chess, both players start with their king in the middle-right of their first rank (between the queen and the king-side bishop). In algebraic notation, the white king starts on e1 and the black king on e8.
