Chess is a board game for two players. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games such as xiangqi and shogi.
The bishop is a piece in the game of chess. It moves and captures along diagonals without jumping over interfering pieces. Each player begins the game with two bishops. The starting squares are c1 and f1 for White's bishops, and c8 and f8 for Black's bishops.
A chess piece, or chessman, is a game piece that is placed on a chessboard to play the game of chess. It can be either white or black, and it can be one of six types: king, queen, rook, bishop, knight, or pawn.
The rules of chess govern the play of the game of chess. Chess is a two-player abstract strategy board game. Each player controls sixteen pieces of six types on a chessboard. Each type of piece moves in a distinct way. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king; checkmate occurs when a king is threatened with capture and has no escape. A game can end in various ways besides checkmate: a player can resign, and there are several ways a game can end in a draw.
The Lewis chessmen or Uig chessmen, named after the island or the bay where they were found, are a group of distinctive 12th century chess pieces, along with other game pieces, most of which are carved from walrus ivory. Discovered in 1831 on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, they may constitute some of the few complete, surviving medieval chess sets, although it is not clear if a single complete period-accurate set can be assembled from the pieces. When found, the hoard contained 94 objects: 78 chess pieces, 14 tablemen and one belt buckle. Today, 82 pieces are owned and usually exhibited by the British Museum in London, and the remaining 11 are at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh; one chesspiece is owned privately.
This glossary of chess explains commonly used terms in chess, in alphabetical order. Some of these terms 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 named opening lines, see List of chess openings; for a list of chess-related games, see List of chess variants; for a list of terms general to board games, see Glossary of board games.
The Immortal Game was a chess game played in 1851 by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky. It was played while the London 1851 chess tournament was in progress, an event in which both players participated. The Immortal Game was itself a casual game, however, not played as part of the tournament. Anderssen won the game by allowing a double rook sacrifice, a major loss of material, while also developing a mating attack with his remaining minor pieces. Despite losing the game, Kieseritzky was impressed with Anderssen's performance. Shortly after it was played, Kieseritzky published the game in La Régence, a French chess journal which he helped to edit. In 1855, Ernst Falkbeer published an analysis of the game, describing it for the first time with its sobriquet "immortal".
Nathaniel Cooke was the English designer of a set of chess figures called the Staunton chess set which is now the standard set.
In chess, a relative value is a standard value conventionally assigned to each piece. Piece valuations have no role in the rules of chess but are useful as an aid to assessing a position.
Handicaps in chess are handicapping variants which enable a weaker player to have a chance of winning against a stronger one. There are a variety of such handicaps, such as material odds, extra moves, extra time on the chess clock, and special conditions. Various permutations of these, such as "pawn and two moves", are also possible.
In chess, promotion is the replacement of a pawn with a new piece when the pawn is moved to its last rank. The player replaces the pawn immediately with a queen, rook, bishop, or knight of the same color. The new piece does not have to be a previously captured piece. Promotion is mandatory when moving to the last rank; the pawn cannot remain as a pawn.
A chess set consists of a chessboard and white and black chess pieces for playing chess. There are sixteen pieces of each color: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. Extra pieces may be provided for use in promotion, most commonly one extra queen per color. Chess boxes, chess clocks, and chess tables are common pieces of chess equipment used alongside chess sets. Chess sets are made in a wide variety of styles, sometimes for ornamental rather than practical purposes. For tournament play, the Staunton chess set is preferred and, in some cases, required.
Hexagonal chess is a group of chess variants played on boards composed of hexagon cells. The best known is Gliński's variant, played on a symmetric 91-cell hexagonal board.
Chess with different armies is a chess variant invented by Ralph Betza in 1979. Two sides use different sets of fairy pieces. There are several armies of equal strength to choose from, including the standard FIDE army. In all armies, kings and pawns are the same as in FIDE chess, but the four other pieces are different.
Courier chess is a chess variant that dates from the 12th century and was popular for at least 600 years. It was a part of the slow evolution towards modern chess from Medieval Chess.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to chess:
Makonde chess sets are made by the Makonde people of southwest Tanzania and Mozambique, carved in the Makonde's distinctive style. Chess sets were originally made for export to Europe but the pattern of the pieces follows traditional Makonde designs rather than any established chess pattern.
The Dubrovnik chess set is a style of chess pieces influenced by the Staunton chess set. These chessmen are considered to have significant historical importance and are regarded as a timeless design classic. Over the decades several variants of the Dubrovnik chessmen were designed.
The Selenus chess set is a style of chess set, in use before the standardization of chess pieces that happened after the Staunton chess set was launched in 1849 by games manufacturer John Jaques of London. The Selenus sets were typical of Germany and Northern Europe and are named after Gustavus Selenus, the pen name of Augustus the Younger, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, author of the Chess or the King's Game, an important chess manual published in the 17th century. The standard included delicate lathe turned bases and shafts and tiers with circlets resembling crowns. Pieces were distinguished by heights, the number of tiers and sometimes by symbols.
The game pieces of the Lewis chessmen hoard consist of ninety-three game pieces of the Lewis chessmen found on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Medieval in origin, they were first exhibited in Edinburgh in 1831 but it is unclear how much earlier they had been discovered. The hoard comprised seventy-eight distinctive chess pieces and fifteen other non-chess pieces, nearly all carved from walrus tusk ivory, and they are now displayed at the British Museum in London and National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh. Another chess piece, which turned up in 1964 and in 2019 was attributed to have come from the original hoard, now belongs to a private collector.
