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 rules of chess as they are known today 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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In chess, the endgame tablebase, or simply tablebase, is a computerised database containing precalculated evaluations of endgame positions. Tablebases are used to analyse finished games, as well as by chess engines to evaluate positions during play. Tablebases are typically exhaustive, covering every legal arrangement of a specific selection of pieces on the board, with both White and Black to move. For each position, the tablebase records the ultimate result of the game (i.e. a win for White, a win for Black, or a draw) and the number of moves required to achieve that result, both assuming perfect play. Because every legal move in a covered position results in another covered position, the tablebase acts as an oracle that always provides the optimal move.

Tablebases are generated by retrograde analysis, working backwards from checkmated positions. By 2005, tablebases for all positions having up to six pieces, including the two kings, had been created. By August 2012, tablebases had solved chess for almost every position with up to seven pieces, with certain subclasses omitted due to their assumed triviality; these omitted positions were included by August 2018. As of 2024^[update], work is still underway to solve all eight-piece positions. (Full article...)

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General images

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

Image 1Chess Set by Man Ray (from Chess in the arts)
Image 2Gustaf Lundberg, 1775, Portrait of Gustav Badin, pastel, 74 x 57 cm, Nationalmuseum, Sweden (from Chess in the arts)
Image 3Paris Bordone, c. 1545, Chess players, oil on canvas, Mailand, Wohnhaus (from Chess in the arts)
Image 4In 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 5Animation of the Immortal Game, in which Adolf Anderssen, playing white, beat Lionel Kieseritzky in June 1851 (from History of chess)
Image 6Richard Creifelds, c. 1886, The Veterans, Brooklyn Museum (from Chess in the arts)
Image 7The 12th-century Lewis chessmen in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland (from History of chess)
Image 8Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official World Chess Champion (from History of chess)
Image 9Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess (1473) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 10Bobby Fischer vs. Mikhail Tal (from History of chess)
Image 11World Champions José Raúl Capablanca (left) and Emanuel Lasker in 1925 (from History of chess)
Image 12Chess game between Tha'ālibī and Bākhazarī, 1896 painting by Ludwig Deutsch (from History of chess)
Image 13John Lavery, 1929, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 14Current World Champion Ding Liren (from History of chess)
Image 15Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 16Krishna and Radha playing chaturanga on an 8×8 Ashtāpada (from History of chess)
Image 17Liberale da Verona, The Chess Players, c. 1475 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 18Shams-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 19Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from History of chess)
Image 20Stamp of the USSR devoted to the accomplished Estonian player and analyst Paul Keres, 1991 (from History of chess)
Image 21Karel van Mander, 1600 (attributed to), Les joueurs d'échecs (from Chess in the arts)
Image 22Antonis Mor, 1549, Von Sachsen vs. a Spaniard (from Chess in the arts)
Image 23Final match of the 1575 tournament in El Escorial. Painting by Luigi Mussini. (from History of chess)
Image 24Thomas Eakins, 1876, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 25Two Georgian writers, Ilia Chavchavadze and Ivane Machabeli, playing chess in Saint Petersburg, 1873 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 26An 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 27Persian manuscript from the 14th century describing how an ambassador from India brought chess to the Persian court (from History of chess)
Image 28Bauhaus chess set by Josef Hartwig (from Chess in the arts)
Image 29RZA at a Hip Hop Chess Federation Tournament (from Chess in the arts)
Image 30Hans Muelich, 1552, Duke Albrecht V. of Bavaria and his wife Anna of Austria playing chess (from Chess in the arts)
Image 31Honoré Daumier, 1863, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 32Iranian shatranj set, glazed fritware, 12th century, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (from History of chess)
Image 33Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, 1555, National Museum, Poznań, Poland (from Chess in the arts)
Image 34A Chess Dispute (1903) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 35Iranian courtiers of the Qajar dynasty playing chess in Mazandaran. (from History of chess)
Image 36Niccolò di Pietro, 1413–15, The Conversion of Saint Augustin, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (from Chess in the arts)
Image 37Edward Harrison May, 1867, Lady Howe mating Benjamin Franklin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 38Some 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 39The Chess Players by Henry Fox Talbot, 1847 (from History of chess)
Image 40Lucas van Leyden, c. 1508, The Game of Chess, oil on oak, 27 x 35 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (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	2799
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	Wesley So	2747
12	Leinier Dominguez	2741
13	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	2740
14	Levon Aronian	2739
15	Vidit Santosh Gujrathi	2739
16	Quang Liem Le	2739
17	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	2738
18	R Praggnanandhaa	2737
19	Maxime Vachier-Lagrave	2737
20	Hans Niemann	2734

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