A board game is a tabletop game that involves counters or pieces moved or placed on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Some games are based on pure strategy, but many contain an element of chance; and some are purely chance, with no element of skill.
Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, former world chess champion, writer, and political activist, whom many consider to be the greatest chess player of all time. From 1986 until his retirement in 2005, Kasparov was ranked world No. 1 for 225 out of 228 months. His peak rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by Magnus Carlsen in 2013. Kasparov also holds records for consecutive professional tournament victories (15) and Chess Oscars (11).
The Internet Chess Club (ICC) is a commercial Internet chess server devoted to the play and discussion of chess and chess variants. ICC currently has over 30,000 subscribing members. It was the first Internet chess server and is the first and largest pay to play chess server.
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor.
Paul Charles Morphy was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and an unofficial World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he was called "The Pride and Sorrow of Chess" because he had a brilliant chess career but retired from the game while still young. Bobby Fischer ranked him among the ten greatest players of all time, and described him as "perhaps the most accurate player who ever lived".
This page explains commonly used terms in chess in alphabetical order. Some of these have their own pages, like fork and pin. For a list of unorthodox chess pieces, see Fairy chess piece; for a list of terms specific to chess problems, see Glossary of chess problems; for a list of chess-related games, see List of chess variants.
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the world champion in chess. Since 2014, the schedule has settled on a two-year cycle with a championship held in every even year. Magnus Carlsen has been world champion since he dethroned Viswanathan Anand in 2013. He then went on to successfully defend his title against Anand in 2014, against Sergey Karjakin in 2016 and against Fabiano Caruana in 2018.
Correspondence chess is chess or variant chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, often through a correspondence chess server, a public internet chess forum, email, or the postal system. Less common methods that have been employed include fax and homing pigeon. It is in contrast to over-the-board (OTB) chess, where the players sit at a chessboard at the same time, or play at the same time remotely.
Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand is an Indian chess grandmaster and a former World Chess Champion.
A chess club is a club formed for the purpose of playing the board game of chess. Chess clubs often provide for both informal and tournament games and sometimes offer league play.
The Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) is a volunteer-run Internet chess server. It was organised as a free alternative to the Internet Chess Club (ICC), after that site began charging for membership.
Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen is a Norwegian chess grandmaster and the current World Chess Champion. He is a two-time World Rapid Chess Champion and four-time World Blitz Chess Champion. His peak classical rating of 2882, achieved in 2014, is the highest in history. Carlsen first reached the top of the FIDE world rankings in 2010, and trails only Garry Kasparov at time spent as world number one.
Fast chess is a type of chess in which each player is given less time to consider their moves than normal tournament time controls allow. The rules specify a cumulative total time for moves for each side. In a fast chess game, each player will have less than the usual 60 minutes at their disposal, based on a 60-move game, and sometimes considerably less time. Fast chess is further subdivided, by decreasing time controls, into rapid chess, blitz chess, and bullet chess. Armageddon chess is a particular variation in which different rules apply for each of the two players.
Robert James Fischer was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. Many consider him to be the greatest chess player of all time.
Solving chess means finding an optimal strategy for playing chess, i.e. one by which one of the players can always force a victory, or both can force a draw. It also means more generally solving chess-like games, such as infinite chess. According to Zermelo's theorem, a hypothetically determinable optimal strategy does exist for chess and chess-like games.
Chessgames.com is an Internet chess community with over 224,000 members. The site maintains a large database of chess games, where each game has its own discussion page for comments and analysis. Limited primarily to games where at least one player is of master strength, the database begins with the earliest known recorded games and is updated with games from current top-level tournaments. Basic membership is free, and the site is open to players at all levels of ability, with additional features available for Premium members. While the primary purpose of Chessgames.com is to provide an outlet for chess discussion and analysis, consultation games are periodically organized with teams of members playing either other teams of members or very strong masters, including a former US champion and two former world correspondence champions. Members can maintain their own discussion pages, and there are features to assist study of openings, endgames and sacrifices. The front page also features a puzzle of the day, player of the day, and game of the day, the puzzle varying in difficulty throughout the week from "very easy" on Mondays to "insane" on Sundays.
Lichess is an Internet chess server. Anyone can play anonymously, although players may register an account on the site to play rated games. All features are available for free, as the site is funded by donations.
A chess variant is a game "related to, derived from, or inspired by chess". Such variants can differ from chess in many different ways, ranging from minor modifications to the rules, to games which have only a slight resemblance.
