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 a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no elements of chance. It is played on a square board consisting of 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, with each type of piece having 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 to at least 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...)

Selected article - show another

White king

The king (♔, ♚) is the most important piece in the game of chess. It may move to any adjoining square; it may also perform, in tandem with the rook, a special move called castling. If a player's king is threatened with capture, it is said to be in check, and the player must remove or evade the threat of capture immediately, such as by moving it away from the attacked square. If this cannot be done, the king is said to be in checkmate, resulting in a loss for that player. A player cannot make any move that places their own king in check. Despite this, the king can become a strong offensive piece in the endgame or, rarely, the middlegame.

In algebraic notation, the king is abbreviated by the letter K among English speakers. The white king starts the game on e1; the black king starts on e8. Unlike all other pieces, each player can have only one king, and the kings are never removed from the board during the game.

This article uses algebraic notation to describe chess moves.

(Full article...)

List of selected articles

General images

The following are images from various chess-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, 1555, National Museum, Poznań, Poland (from Chess in the arts)
Image 2Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess (1473) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 3Bobby Fischer vs. Mikhail Tal (from History of chess)
Image 4Niccolò di Pietro, 1413–15, The Conversion of Saint Augustin, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (from Chess in the arts)
Image 5In 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 6Edward Harrison May, 1867, Lady Howe mating Benjamin Franklin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 7Two Georgian writers, Ilia Chavchavadze and Ivane Machabeli, playing chess in Saint Petersburg, 1873 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 8Bauhaus chess set by Josef Hartwig (from Chess in the arts)
Image 9Paris Bordone, c. 1545, Chess players, oil on canvas, Mailand, Wohnhaus (from Chess in the arts)
Image 10Chess Set by Man Ray (from Chess in the arts)
Image 11Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from History of chess)
Image 12These 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. Photographed during a loan of the pieces to the Silk Roads Exhibition at the British Museum. (from History of chess)
Image 13Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 14Antonis Mor, 1549, Von Sachsen vs. a Spaniard (from Chess in the arts)
Image 15John Lavery, 1929, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 16Animation of the Immortal Game, in which Adolf Anderssen, playing White, beat Lionel Kieseritzky in June 1851 (from History of chess)
Image 17Stamp of the USSR devoted to the accomplished Estonian player and analyst Paul Keres, 1991 (from History of chess)
Image 18An 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 19Current world champion Gukesh Dommaraju (from History of chess)
Image 20Thomas Eakins, 1876, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 21Some 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 22The Chess Players by Henry Fox Talbot, 1847 (from History of chess)
Image 23Persian manuscript from the 14th century describing how an ambassador from India brought chess to the Persian court (from History of chess)
Image 24Iranian shatranj set, glazed fritware, 12th century, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (from History of chess)
Image 25Karel van Mander, 1600 (attributed to), Les joueurs d'échecs (from Chess in the arts)
Image 26Hans Muelich, 1552, Duke Albrecht V. of Bavaria and his wife Anna of Austria playing chess (from Chess in the arts)
Image 27Liberale da Verona, The Chess Players, c. 1475 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 28Honoré Daumier, 1863, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 29Cocowood chess set (Philippines craft) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 30Gustaf Lundberg, 1775, Portrait of Gustav Badin, pastel, 74 x 57 cm, Nationalmuseum, Sweden (from Chess in the arts)
Image 31Krishna and Radha playing chaturanga on an 8×8 ashtāpada (from History of chess)
Image 32Final match of the 1575 tournament in El Escorial. Painting by Luigi Mussini. (from History of chess)
Image 33A Chess Dispute (1903) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 34Lucas van Leyden, c. 1508, The Game of Chess, oil on oak, 27 x 35 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 35RZA at a Hip Hop Chess Federation Tournament (from Chess in the arts)
Image 36Chess game between Tha'ālibī and Bākhazarī, 1896 painting by Ludwig Deutsch (from History of chess)
Image 37Shams-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 38Iranian courtiers of the Qajar dynasty playing chess in Mazandaran (from History of chess)
Image 39Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official World Chess Champion (from History of chess)
Image 40Richard Creifelds, c. 1886, The Veterans, Brooklyn Museum (from Chess in the arts)
Image 41The 12th-century Lewis chessmen in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland (from History of chess)
Image 42World Champions José Raúl Capablanca (left) and Emanuel Lasker in 1925 (from History of chess)

Selected image

Image 1Click to enlarge and view description
Image 2Click to enlarge and view description
Image 3Click to enlarge and view description

FIDE world ranking

Rank	Player	Rating
1	Magnus Carlsen	2837
2	Hikaru Nakamura	2804
3	Gukesh Dommaraju	2787
4	Arjun Erigaisi	2782
5	Fabiano Caruana	2776
6	Nodirbek Abdusattorov	2771
7	R Praggnanandhaa	2758
8	Wei Yi	2758
9	Alireza Firouzja	2757
10	Ian Nepomniachtchi	2757
11	Wesley So	2751
12	Aravindh Chithambaram	2749
13	Levon Aronian	2747
14	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	2746
15	Viswanathan Anand	2743
16	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	2739
17	Vladimir Fedoseev	2739
18	Anish Giri	2738
19	Leinier Domínguez Pérez	2738
20	Hans Niemann	2736

Did you know...

No recent additions

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