Chess

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Chess Buy this Art Print at AllPosters.com

A board game for two players played on a board containing 64 squares alternately black and white. Each player has 16 pieces, either black or white, consisting of eight pawns, two rooks (also known as castles), two knights, two bishops, a queen, and a king. The game is one of strategy, the object being to attack the opponent's king in such fashion that it cannot move safely. That attacking move is called checkmate. All pieces have set moves, and the most versatile is the queen. The game was probably first played in ancient India, where it was known as chaturanga, then spread E to China and W to Persia. The earliest documentary references are in Persian and Chinese texts in c.600. A Chinese bibliography of that date includes books on chess, and a 10th-c Chinese encyclopedia dates it to 568.

Chess originated in India or China in about the 6th or 7th century. It spread from throughout all of Asia and the Middle East, arriving in Europe by the 10th century.

Chess can be seen as a battle between different social orders. It re-creates the battlefield, with the status of each member -- from king to pawn -- being graduated. The aim is to capture the king. Since at least the 15th century, chess has been known as the "royal game" because of its popularity among the nobility. Rules and set design slowly evolved until they reached today's standard in the early 19th century.

The international body which supervises the game is the World Chess Federation (Fédération Internationale des Echecs, or FIDE). It traditionally organizes the world chess championships and other international competitions, though in 1987 a disagreement between Russian grandmaster Gary Kasparov and FIDE over levels of prize funding and FIDE's alleged autocratic methods led Kasparov to promote a breakaway body (the Professional Chess Association).

This body mounted an independent championship match in 1993 between Kasparov and his official challenger, UK grandmaster Nigel Short. Both players were then stripped of their right to contest the World Chess Federation title by FIDE, who invited Russian grandmaster Anatoly Karpov and Dutch grandmaster Jan Timman to play in their place. Kasparov and Karpov won their respective matches, but neither were enthusiastic about the prospect of a unifying match, and at the end of 1993 the international chess world remained split between the two bodies.

Chess is frequently used as an intellectual metaphor in literature. Goethe described chess as "the touchstone of the intellect", while Lenin called it "the gymnasium of the mind". In 1990 Bankers Trust, a leading US financial institution, ran a series of ads in Chess Life, the world's widest-read chess magazine, seeking applicants for their trading division. They received over 1,000 responses, and hired five chessplayers, two of whom were grandmasters.

Rules of Chess

Chess Posters

Super Chess 1937 Paul Klee Buy This Art Print At AllPosters.com

Illusion Chess Board Buy this Poster at AllPosters.com

The Chess Game Buy this Giclee Print at AllPosters.com

Chess Watt, Boyce Buy this Art Print at AllPosters.com

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