Portal:Chess

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, played on a square board consisting of 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, with each piece type having 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 dates back to the emergence of chaturanga in 7th-century India. Chaturanga is also thought to be an ancestor of similar games like janggi, xiangqi, and shogi. After its introduction to 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, becoming standardized and gaining 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. International chess competitions today are governed by the International Chess Federation FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs). 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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Fischer in 1972

Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won with an 11–0 score, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. Qualifying for the 1972 World Championship, Fischer swept matches with Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen by 6–0 scores. After winning another qualifying match against Tigran Petrosian, Fischer won the title match against Boris Spassky of the USSR, in Reykjavík, Iceland. Publicized as a Cold War confrontation between the US and USSR, the match attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since.

In 1975, Fischer refused to defend his title when an agreement could not be reached with FIDE, chess's international governing body, over the match conditions. Consequently, the Soviet challenger Anatoly Karpov was named World Champion by default. Fischer subsequently disappeared from the public eye, though occasional reports of erratic behavior emerged. In 1992, he reemerged to win an unofficial rematch against Spassky. It was held in Yugoslavia, which at the time was under an embargo of the United Nations. His participation led to a conflict with the US federal government, which warned Fischer that his participation in the match would violate an executive order imposing US sanctions on Yugoslavia. The US government ultimately issued a warrant for his arrest; subsequently, Fischer lived as an émigré. In 2004, he was arrested in Japan and held for several months for using a passport that the US government had revoked. Eventually, he was granted Icelandic citizenship by a special act of the Althing, allowing him to live there until his death in 2008. During his life, Fischer made numerous antisemitic statements, including Holocaust denial, despite his Jewish ancestry. His antisemitism was a major theme in his public and private remarks, and there has been speculation concerning his psychological condition based on his extreme views and eccentric behavior. (Full article...)

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General images

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

Image 1Current world champion Gukesh Dommaraju (from History of chess)
Image 2Richard Creifelds, c. 1886, The Veterans, Brooklyn Museum (from Chess in the arts)
Image 3Chess game between Tha'ālibī and Bākhazarī, 1896 painting by Ludwig Deutsch (from History of chess)
Image 4The 12th-century Lewis chessmen in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland (from History of chess)
Image 5Bauhaus chess set by Josef Hartwig (from Chess in the arts)
Image 6An 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 7Persian manuscript from the 14th century describing how an ambassador from India brought chess to the Persian court (from History of chess)
Image 8John Lavery, 1929, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 9Animation of the Immortal Game, in which Adolf Anderssen, playing White, beat Lionel Kieseritzky in June 1851 (from History of chess)
Image 10World Champions José Raúl Capablanca (left) and Emanuel Lasker in 1925 (from History of chess)
Image 11Lucas van Leyden, c. 1508, The Game of Chess, oil on oak, 27 x 35 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (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 14Bobby Fischer vs. Mikhail Tal (from History of chess)
Image 15Hans Muelich, 1552, Duke Albrecht V. of Bavaria and his wife Anna of Austria playing chess (from Chess in the arts)
Image 16The Chess Players by Henry Fox Talbot, 1847 (from History of chess)
Image 17Thomas Eakins, 1876, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 18Antonis Mor, 1549, Von Sachsen vs. a Spaniard (from Chess in the arts)
Image 19Final match of the 1575 tournament in El Escorial. Painting by Luigi Mussini. (from History of chess)
Image 20Two Georgian writers, Ilia Chavchavadze and Ivane Machabeli, playing chess in Saint Petersburg, 1873 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 21Krishna and Radha playing chaturanga on an 8×8 ashtāpada (from History of chess)
Image 22Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official World Chess Champion (from History of chess)
Image 23Chess Set by Man Ray (from Chess in the arts)
Image 24Cocowood chess set (Philippines craft) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 25Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 26Shams-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 27In 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 28Niccolò di Pietro, 1413–15, The Conversion of Saint Augustin, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (from Chess in the arts)
Image 29Some 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 30These 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 31Paris Bordone, c. 1545, Chess players, oil on canvas, Mailand, Wohnhaus (from Chess in the arts)
Image 32Karel van Mander, 1600 (attributed to), Les joueurs d'échecs (from Chess in the arts)
Image 33Liberale da Verona, The Chess Players, c. 1475 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 34Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess (1473) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 35Iranian courtiers of the Qajar dynasty playing chess in Mazandaran (from History of chess)
Image 36RZA at a Hip Hop Chess Federation Tournament (from Chess in the arts)
Image 37Iranian shatranj set, glazed fritware, 12th century, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (from History of chess)
Image 38Stamp of the USSR devoted to the accomplished Estonian player and analyst Paul Keres, 1991 (from History of chess)
Image 39Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, 1555, National Museum, Poznań, Poland (from Chess in the arts)
Image 40Honoré Daumier, 1863, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 41Edward Harrison May, 1867, Lady Howe mating Benjamin Franklin (from Chess in the arts)

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FIDE world ranking

Rank	Player	Rating
1	Magnus Carlsen	2840
2	Hikaru Nakamura	2792
3	Fabiano Caruana	2788
4	Nodirbek Abdusattorov	2780
5	Javokhir Sindarov	2776
6	Anish Giri	2767
7	Vincent Keymer	2759
8	Alireza Firouzja	2759
9	Wesley So	2754
10	Wei Yi	2753
11	Arjun Erigaisi	2751
12	Hans Moke Niemann	2742
13	Viswanathan Anand	2739
14	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	2739
15	Ding Liren	2738
16	Jorden Van Foreest	2735
17	R Praggnanandhaa	2733
18	Leinier Domínguez	2732
19	Gukesh Dommaraju	2732
20	Lê Quang Liêm	2731

Did you know...

... that there have been attempts to make chess an Olympic sport since at least 1924?
... that the Chess World Cup 1988–1989 featured a game of human chess between Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman?

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