William Watson | |
---|---|
Country | England |
Born | Baghdad, Iraq | April 18, 1962
Title | Grandmaster (1990) |
FIDE rating | 2475 (May 2024) |
Peak rating | 2560 (July 1992) |
William Nicholas Watson (born 18 April 1962 in Baghdad, Iraq) is an English chess grandmaster.
Watson was British Rapidplay Chess Champion in 1992 and British Chess Champion in 1994. Boris Spassky once described his style of play as that of a drunk with a machine gun. [1]
Watson has long been inactive as a competitive chess player, and is a tax attorney and partner at Slaughter and May. [2]
Chess is a board game for two players, each controlling a set of chess pieces. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games such as xiangqi and shogi. The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. The rules of chess as they are known today 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, and is played by millions of people worldwide.
Deep Blue was a chess-playing expert system run on a unique purpose-built IBM supercomputer. It was the first computer to win a game, and the first to win a match, against a reigning world champion under regular time controls. Development began in 1985 at Carnegie Mellon University under the name ChipTest. It then moved to IBM, where it was first renamed Deep Thought, then again in 1989 to Deep Blue. It first played world champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match in 1996, where it lost four games to two. It was upgraded in 1997 and in a six-game re-match, it defeated Kasparov by winning two games and drawing three. Deep Blue's victory is considered a milestone in the history of artificial intelligence and has been the subject of several books and films.
John, Johnny, or Johnie Watson may refer to:
Howard Staunton was an English chess master who is generally regarded as the world's strongest player from 1843 to 1851, largely as a result of his 1843 victory over Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant. He promoted a chess set of clearly distinguishable pieces of standardised shape – the Staunton pattern promulgated by Nathaniel Cooke – that is still the style required for competitions. He was the principal organiser of the first international chess tournament in 1851, which made England the world's leading chess centre and caused Adolf Anderssen to be recognised as the world's strongest player.
William Steinitz was a Bohemian-Austrian and, later, American chess player. From 1886 to 1894, he was the first World Chess Champion. He was also a highly influential writer and chess theoretician.
William, Willie, Bill or Billy Watson may refer to:
The Scottish Chess Championship is organised by Chess Scotland, formerly the Scottish Chess Association. It has been running since 1884, and nowadays takes the form of a nine-round tournament played over two weekends and the week in between. Auxiliary tournaments, such as grading-limited sections and a senior championship take place over the first seven days and there is a Weekend Congress on the second weekend.
The Modern Benoni is a chess opening that begins with the moves 1.d4Nf6 2.c4c5 3.d5e6. It is classified under the ECO codes A60–A79. After the initial moves, Black proceeds to capture on d5, creating a majority of black pawns on the queenside. To support their advance, the king's bishop is usually fianchettoed on g7. These two features differentiate Black's setup from the other Benoni defences and the King's Indian Defence, although transpositions between these openings are common.
Harry Golombek OBE was a British chess player, chess author, and wartime codebreaker. He was three times British chess champion, in 1947, 1949, and 1955 and finished second in 1948.
Owen's Defence is an uncommon chess opening defined by the moves:
Slaughter and May is a British multinational law firm headquartered in London, England. Founded in 1889, Slaughter and May is considered to be one of the most prestigious law firms in the world and is a member of the "Magic Circle" of elite London-headquartered law firms. In addition to London, it has offices in Beijing, Brussels and Hong Kong.
British Chess Magazine is the world's oldest chess journal in continuous publication. First published in January 1881, it has appeared at monthly intervals ever since. It is frequently known in the chess world as BCM.
In chess, the exchange is the material difference of a rook for a minor piece. Having a rook for a minor piece is generally advantageous, since the rook is usually more valuable. A player who has a rook for a minor piece is said to be up the exchange, and the other player is down the exchange. A player who wins a rook for a minor piece is said to have won the exchange, while the other player has lost the exchange. The opposing captures often happen on consecutive moves, but this is not strictly necessary. Although it is generally detrimental to lose the exchange, one may occasionally find reason to purposely do so; the result is an exchange sacrifice.
The English Chess Federation (ECF) is the governing chess organisation in England. It is affiliated to FIDE. The ECF was formed in 2004 as one of the more localised successors to the British Chess Federation (BCF), an organisation founded in 1904.
The Ulster Chess Championship is an annual chess tournament organised by the Ulster Chess Union which has been held since 1892. It is currently open to all players who qualify as having been born in any of the 9 counties of Ulster. Nearly all Championships since 1982 have been played in Belfast. Among the winners in recent years have been two players, both also Irish Champions, who now have the title of International Master (IM), Mark Orr and Brian Kelly (1994/95). Recent winners are
In chess, there is a consensus among players and theorists that the player who makes the first move (White) has an inherent advantage, albeit not one large enough to win with perfect play. This has been the consensus since at least 1889, when the first World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, addressed the issue, although chess has not been solved.
The game of chess is commonly divided into three phases: the opening, middlegame, and endgame. There is a large body of theory regarding how the game should be played in each of these phases, especially the opening and endgame. Those who write about chess theory, who are often also eminent players, are referred to as "theorists" or "theoreticians".
Charles Gilbert Marriott Watson was an Australian national chess champion.
John Leonard Watson is an American chess player and author who was awarded the title of International Master in 1979.
Pawn Sacrifice is a 2014 American biographical drama film about chess grandmaster and 11th world champion Bobby Fischer. It follows Fischer's challenge against top Soviet chess grandmasters during the Cold War and culminating in the World Chess Championship 1972 match versus Boris Spassky in Reykjavík, Iceland. It was directed by Edward Zwick and written by Steven Knight, and stars Tobey Maguire as Fischer, Liev Schreiber as Spassky, Lily Rabe as Joan Fischer, and Peter Sarsgaard as William Lombardy. It was released in the United States on September 16, 2015.