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 an abstract strategy board game for two players which involves no hidden information and no elements of chance. It is played on a square game board called a chessboard containing 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; each type of piece has 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 goes back at least to the emergence of chaturanga—also thought to be an ancestor to similar games like xiangqi and shogi—in seventh-century India. After its introduction in 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, 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.

Organized chess arose in the 19th century. Chess competition today is governed internationally by FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs; the International Chess Federation). 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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Capablanca in 1931

José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera (19 November 1888 – 8 March 1942) was a Cuban chess player who was the third world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. A chess prodigy, he is widely renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play.

Capablanca was born in 1888 in the Castillo del Príncipe, Havana. He beat Cuban champion Juan Corzo in a match on 17 November 1901, two days before his 13th birthday. His victory over Frank Marshall in a 1909 match earned him an invitation to the 1911 San Sebastián tournament, which he won ahead of players such as Akiba Rubinstein, Aron Nimzowitsch and Siegbert Tarrasch. Over the next several years, Capablanca had a strong series of tournament results. After several unsuccessful attempts to arrange a match with then world champion Emanuel Lasker, Capablanca finally won the world chess champion title from Lasker in 1921. Capablanca was undefeated from February 10, 1916 to March 21, 1924, a period that included the world championship match with Lasker. (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 2Karel van Mander, 1600 (attributed to), Les joueurs d'échecs (from Chess in the arts)
Image 3In 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 4These 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. Taken during a loan of the pieces to the Silk Roads Exhibition at the British Museum (from History of chess)
Image 5The Chess Players by Henry Fox Talbot, 1847 (from History of chess)
Image 6World Champions José Raúl Capablanca (left) and Emanuel Lasker in 1925 (from History of chess)
Image 7Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess (1473) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 8Hans Muelich, 1552, Duke Albrecht V. of Bavaria and his wife Anna of Austria playing chess (from Chess in the arts)
Image 9Thomas Eakins, 1876, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 10Lucas van Leyden, c. 1508, The Game of Chess, oil on oak, 27 x 35 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 11Stamp of the USSR devoted to the accomplished Estonian player and analyst Paul Keres, 1991 (from History of chess)
Image 12Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 13Some 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 14Honoré Daumier, 1863, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 15Cocowood chess set (Philippines craft) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 16Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from History of chess)
Image 17Chess game between Tha'ālibī and Bākhazarī, 1896 painting by Ludwig Deutsch (from History of chess)
Image 18Bauhaus chess set by Josef Hartwig (from Chess in the arts)
Image 19Iranian courtiers of the Qajar dynasty playing chess in Mazandaran. (from History of chess)
Image 20Persian manuscript from the 14th century describing how an ambassador from India brought chess to the Persian court (from History of chess)
Image 21Iranian shatranj set, glazed fritware, 12th century, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (from History of chess)
Image 22An 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 23Niccolò di Pietro, 1413–15, The Conversion of Saint Augustin, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (from Chess in the arts)
Image 24Two Georgian writers, Ilia Chavchavadze and Ivane Machabeli, playing chess in Saint Petersburg, 1873 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 25Liberale da Verona, The Chess Players, c. 1475 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 26Animation of the Immortal Game, in which Adolf Anderssen, playing white, beat Lionel Kieseritzky in June 1851 (from History of chess)
Image 27Antonis Mor, 1549, Von Sachsen vs. a Spaniard (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 29Gustaf Lundberg, 1775, Portrait of Gustav Badin, pastel, 74 x 57 cm, Nationalmuseum, Sweden (from Chess in the arts)
Image 30The 12th-century Lewis chessmen in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland (from History of chess)
Image 31Bobby Fischer vs. Mikhail Tal (from History of chess)
Image 32Krishna and Radha playing chaturanga on an 8×8 Ashtāpada (from History of chess)
Image 33Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official World Chess Champion (from History of chess)
Image 34Edward Harrison May, 1867, Lady Howe mating Benjamin Franklin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 35Richard Creifelds, c. 1886, The Veterans, Brooklyn Museum (from Chess in the arts)
Image 36Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, 1555, National Museum, Poznań, Poland (from Chess in the arts)
Image 37John Lavery, 1929, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 38Paris Bordone, c. 1545, Chess players, oil on canvas, Mailand, Wohnhaus (from Chess in the arts)
Image 39Final match of the 1575 tournament in El Escorial. Painting by Luigi Mussini. (from History of chess)
Image 40Current World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju (from History of chess)
Image 41RZA at a Hip Hop Chess Federation Tournament (from Chess in the arts)
Image 42A Chess Dispute (1903) (from Chess in the arts)

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FIDE world ranking

Rank	Player	Rating
1	Magnus Carlsen	2833
2	Hikaru Nakamura	2802
3	Gukesh Dommaraju	2787
4	Fabiano Caruana	2783
5	Arjun Erigaisi	2777
6	Nodirbek Abdusattorov	2773
7	Wei Yi	2760
8	R Praggnanandhaa	2758
9	Alireza Firouzja	2757
10	Ian Nepomniachtchi	2753
11	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	2748
12	Wesley So	2748
13	Levon Aronian	2748
14	Viswanathan Anand	2743
15	Leinier Domínguez Pérez	2741
16	Vladimir Fedoseev	2739
17	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	2739
18	Lê Quang Liêm	2739
19	Anish Giri	2737
20	Ding Liren	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