

Thus, on White's first rank, from left to right, the pieces are placed in the following order: rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook. The pieces are set out as shown in the diagram and photo. By convention, the 64 squares alternate in color and are referred to as light and dark squares common colors for chessboards are white and brown, or white and dark green. The game is played on a square board of eight rows (called ranks) and eight columns (called files). Chess sets come in a wide variety of styles for competition, the Staunton pattern is preferred. Each set consists of 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. The players of the sets are referred to as White and Black, respectively. the light set may be a yellowish or off-white color, the dark set may be brown or red), they are always referred to as "white" and "black". While the sets may not be literally white and black (e.g. Today's chess engines are significantly stronger than the best human players and have deeply influenced the development of chess theory.Ĭhess pieces are divided into two different colored sets. In 1997, Deep Blue became the first computer to beat the reigning World Champion in a match when it defeated Garry Kasparov. One of the goals of early computer scientists was to create a chess-playing machine. Aspects of art are found in chess composition, and chess in its turn influenced Western culture and art, and has connections with other fields such as mathematics, computer science, and psychology. A huge body of chess theory has developed since the game's inception. The first universally recognized World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886 Magnus Carlsen is the current World Champion. Chess competition today is governed internationally by FIDE (International Chess Federation). Organized chess arose in the 19th century. There are also several ways a game can end in a draw. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king, whereby the king is under immediate attack (in " check") and there is no way for it to escape. The player who moves first controls white pieces, and the other controls black pieces. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns.

It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid.

Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide.Ĭhess is an abstract strategy game and involves no hidden information. The current form of the game emerged in Spain and the rest of Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from chaturanga, a similar but much older game of Indian origin. It is sometimes called Western chess or international chess to distinguish it from related games, such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). 15th century to present (predecessors circa 900 years earlier)Ĭasual games usually last 10 to 60 minutes tournament games last anywhere from about 10 minutes ( fast chess) to 6 hours or more.Ĭhess is a board game for two players.

Left to right: white king, black rook, black queen, white pawn, black knight, white bishopĬ.
