Portal:Chess

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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 an abstract strategy game which involves no hidden information and no elements of chance. It is played on a square board containing 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; each type of piece has a different pattern of movement. An enemy piece may be captured (removed from the board) by moving one's own piece onto the square it occupies; 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 chaturanga—also thought to be an ancestor to similar games like xiangqi and shogi—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.

Organized chess arose in the 19th century. Chess competition today is governed internationally by FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs; the International Chess Federation). The first universally recognized World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886; Gukesh Dommaraju is the current World Champion, having won the title in 2024. (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 leaves 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.

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General images

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

Image 1Krishna and Radha playing chaturanga on an 8×8 ashtāpada (from History of chess)
Image 2Chess game between Tha'ālibī and Bākhazarī, 1896 painting by Ludwig Deutsch (from History of chess)
Image 3Cocowood chess set (Philippines craft) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 4Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess (1473) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 5The Chess Players by Henry Fox Talbot, 1847 (from History of chess)
Image 6Bauhaus chess set by Josef Hartwig (from Chess in the arts)
Image 7Persian manuscript from the 14th century describing how an ambassador from India brought chess to the Persian court (from History of chess)
Image 8Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 9John Lavery, 1929, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 10Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from History of chess)
Image 11Antonis Mor, 1549, Von Sachsen vs. a Spaniard (from Chess in the arts)
Image 12Honoré Daumier, 1863, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 13Iranian shatranj set, glazed fritware, 12th century, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (from History of chess)
Image 14Liberale da Verona, The Chess Players, c. 1475 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 15Final match of the 1575 tournament in El Escorial. Painting by Luigi Mussini. (from History of chess)
Image 16Lucas van Leyden, c. 1508, The Game of Chess, oil on oak, 27 x 35 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 17Shams-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 18Paris Bordone, c. 1545, Chess players, oil on canvas, Mailand, Wohnhaus (from Chess in the arts)
Image 19Some 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 20Chess Set by Man Ray (from Chess in the arts)
Image 21Thomas Eakins, 1876, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 22The 12th-century Lewis chessmen in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland (from History of chess)
Image 23These 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. Photographed during a loan of the pieces to the Silk Roads Exhibition at the British Museum. (from History of chess)
Image 24Iranian courtiers of the Qajar dynasty playing chess in Mazandaran (from History of chess)
Image 25Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, 1555, National Museum, Poznań, Poland (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 27A Chess Dispute (1903) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 28Current world champion Gukesh Dommaraju (from History of chess)
Image 29Two Georgian writers, Ilia Chavchavadze and Ivane Machabeli, playing chess in Saint Petersburg, 1873 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 30Bobby Fischer vs. Mikhail Tal (from History of chess)
Image 31In 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 32Gustaf Lundberg, 1775, Portrait of Gustav Badin, pastel, 74 x 57 cm, Nationalmuseum, Sweden (from Chess in the arts)
Image 33Edward Harrison May, 1867, Lady Howe mating Benjamin Franklin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 34World Champions José Raúl Capablanca (left) and Emanuel Lasker in 1925 (from History of chess)
Image 35Richard Creifelds, c. 1886, The Veterans, Brooklyn Museum (from Chess in the arts)
Image 36RZA at a Hip Hop Chess Federation Tournament (from Chess in the arts)
Image 37Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official World Chess Champion (from History of chess)
Image 38Niccolò di Pietro, 1413–15, The Conversion of Saint Augustin, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (from Chess in the arts)
Image 39Stamp of the USSR devoted to the accomplished Estonian player and analyst Paul Keres, 1991 (from History of chess)
Image 40An 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 41Karel van Mander, 1600 (attributed to), Les joueurs d'échecs (from Chess in the arts)
Image 42Hans Muelich, 1552, Duke Albrecht V. of Bavaria and his wife Anna of Austria playing chess (from Chess in the arts)

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FIDE world ranking

Rank	Player	Rating
1	Magnus Carlsen	2837
2	Hikaru Nakamura	2804
3	Gukesh Dommaraju	2787
4	Arjun Erigaisi	2782
5	Fabiano Caruana	2776
6	Nodirbek Abdusattorov	2771
7	R Praggnanandhaa	2758
8	Wei Yi	2758
9	Alireza Firouzja	2757
10	Ian Nepomniachtchi	2757
11	Wesley So	2751
12	Aravindh Chithambaram	2749
13	Levon Aronian	2747
14	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	2746
15	Viswanathan Anand	2743
16	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	2739
17	Vladimir Fedoseev	2739
18	Anish Giri	2738
19	Leinier Domínguez Pérez	2738
20	Hans Niemann	2736

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Reviewed articles

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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
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	Cramling, Anna	Staunton, Howard
	Deep Blue (Chess computer)	Steinitz, Wilhelm
	En passant	Turochamp
	Endgame tablebase	World Chess Championship 1972
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