Introduction

Opening position

A mental sport wherein players struggle to weave chains of consequences. A seemingly simple game to a novice but extremely difficult to master, sometimes impossible. A game where the objective is to violently throw your pieces to the floor upon losing. The number of possible unique chess games is much greater than the number of electrons in the universe. The number of electrons is estimated to be about 10^79, while the number of unique chess games is 10^120.

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Rules Of Chess

Chess is played on a chessboard, a square board divided into 64 squares (eight-by-eight) of alternating color, which is similar to that used in draughts (checkers). No matter what the actual colors of the board, the lighter-colored squares are called "light" or "white", and the darker-colored squares are called "dark" or "black". Sixteen "white" and sixteen "black" pieces are placed on the board at the beginning of the game. The board is placed so that a white square is in each player's near-right corner.

Opening position

Basic Moves:

Each chess piece has its own method of movement. Moves are made to vacant squares except when capturing an opponent's piece.

With the exception of any movement of the knight and the occasional castling maneuver, pieces cannot jump over each other. When a piece is captured (or taken), the attacking piece replaces the enemy piece on its square. The captured piece is thus removed from the game and may not be returned to play for the remainder of the game. The king can be put in check but cannot be captured.

  1. The king can move exactly one square horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Only once per player, per game, is a king allowed to make a special move known as castling.

  2. The rook moves any number of vacant squares vertically or horizontally. It also is moved while castling.

  3. The bishop moves any number of vacant squares in any diagonal direction.

  4. The queen can move any number of vacant squares diagonally, horizontally, or vertically.

  5. The knight moves to the nearest square not on the same rank, file, or diagonal. In other words, the knight moves two squares horizontally then one square vertically, or one square horizontally then two squares vertically. Its move is not blocked by other pieces: it jumps to the new location.

  6. A pawn can move forward one square, if that square is unoccupied. If it has not yet moved, each pawn has the option of moving two squares forward provided both squares in front of the pawn are unoccupied. A pawn cannot move backwards.

Chess Moves

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Castling

Castling consists of moving the king two squares towards a rook, then placing the rook on the other side of the king, adjacent to it. Castling is only permissible if all of the following conditions hold:

The king and rook involved in castling must not have previously moved; There must be no pieces between the king and the rook; The king may not currently be in check, nor may the king pass through or end up in a square that is under attack by an enemy piece (though the rook is permitted to be under attack and to pass over an attacked square); The king and the rook must be on the same rank

Checkmate

If a player's king is placed in check and there is no legal move that player can make to escape check, then the king is said to be checkmated, the game ends, and that player loses. Unlike other pieces, the king is never actually captured or removed from the board because checkmate ends the game.

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Chess Tactic

A discovered attack is a move which allows an attack by another piece. A piece is moved away so as to allow the attack of a friendly bishop, rook or queen on an enemy piece. If the attacked piece is the king, the situation is referred to as a discovered check. Discovered attacks are powerful as the moving piece may be able to pose a second threat.

discovered-attack

A special case of a discovered check is a double check, where the piece being unmasked and the piece being moved attack the enemy king. A double check requires that the opponent moves his/her king as the king is under attack from two directions and it is impossible to counter both at the same time in any other way.

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Game of the Century

This is a game analysis from a tournament held in New York City on October 17th, 1956. Bobby Fischer (13-years-old) played the Grunfeld (Gruenfeld) Defense opening against a strong master at the time, Donald Byrne. The game is now given the label, Game of the Century. The white king ends up getting trapped in the center of the board. Fischer spent the latter part of his life in Reykjavik, Iceland. This defense has been played by the world's best.

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