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, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh century India. 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 played by millions of people worldwide.

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. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. White moves first, followed by Black. The game is won by checkmating the opponent's king, i.e. threatening it with inescapable capture. There are also several ways a game can end in a draw.

Organized chess arose in the 19th century. Chess competition today is governed internationally by FIDE (the International Chess Federation). The first universally recognized World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886; Ding Liren is the current World Champion. A huge body of chess theory has developed since the game's inception. Aspects of art are found in chess composition, and chess in its turn influenced Western culture and the arts, and has connections with other fields such as mathematics, computer science, and psychology. (Full article...)

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Grandmaster (GM) is a title awarded to chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Apart from World Champion, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain. Once achieved, the title is held for life, though exceptionally the title can be revoked for cheating.

The title of Grandmaster, along with the lesser FIDE titles of International Master (IM), FIDE Master (FM), and Candidate Master (CM), is open to all players regardless of gender. The great majority of grandmasters are men, but 40 women have been awarded the GM title as of 2022, out of a total of about 2000 grandmasters. There is also a Woman Grandmaster title with lower requirements awarded only to women. (Full article...)

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General images

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

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

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FIDE world ranking

Rank	Player	Rating
1	Magnus Carlsen	2829
2	Fabiano Caruana	2795
3	Ding Liren	2780
4	Hikaru Nakamura	2778
5	Alireza Firouzja	2777
6	Ian Nepomniachtchi	2771
7	Wesley So	2752
8	Anish Giri	2752
9	Sergey Karjakin	2750
10	Richard Rapport	2748
11	Viswanathan Anand	2748
12	Gukesh D.	2746
13	Leinier Dominguez	2745
14	Teimour Radjabov	2745
15	R. Praggnanandhaa	2741
16	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	2734
17	Maxime Vachier-Lagrave	2734
18	Parham Maghsoodloo	2732
19	Alexander Grischuk	2732
20	Lê Quang Liêm	2731

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