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The Basics of Chess
By Ron King
Chess is a fascinating board game that was invented thousands of years ago. Throughout its long history, it has earned acclaim and is considered to be the 'king' of board games. Several famous personalities were known for their skills. Napoleon, Nikola Tesla, Charlie Chaplin and Einstein were among them.
Chess can provide many hours of pleasure, not to mention intellectual exercise, since the game is known to improve analytical thinking, creativity and judgment.
In the past was mainly played by courtiers. Now everyone may enjoy this privilege. Chess attracts people of all ages from all over the world. Chess is intriguing, for it allows players to pit their wits, experience and inspiration against a competitor.
All you need to start playing is a chessboard and pieces -- or if you wish to play online, you need nothing more than your computer. The chessboard is an 8"x 8" board with alternating black and white squares; nearly everyone is sure to have seen one.
There are 32 pieces in total; 16 white pieces and their 16 black counterparts. One player owns the white pieces (we call this player WHITE) and the opponent (the BLACK) gets the black ones. The 16 pieces are: the King, the Queen, two Rooks, two Bishops, two Knights and eight Pawns.
When the game starts these pieces are placed in their initial, predefined positions. The arrangement is as follows:
Shirov's One Hundred Wins
Today, I offer all of the games in Sergei Soloviov's Shirov's One Hundred Wins, exciting, complex games all, as well as one of the two games in the book that involve the Perenyi Variation.
Uncompromising Chess
Many of you may never have heard the name Victor Kupreichik, perhaps the fiercest fighter amoung all Russian GMs. That says a lot when you consider names like Keres and Tal, but Kupreichik's games stand apart. A relentless desire to win, in every game, and enormous creative talent, finding original ideas in positions that others have dismissed.
The Chess of Richard Reti
Chess master, chess journalist, and chess composer Richard Reti participated in most of the great tournaments of the 1920s until his early death from Scarlett fever in 1929. He leaves us with a lifetime worth of wonderful games and, more important perhaps, a range of fabulous compositions and an opening (The Reti) that continues to attract interest at the highest levels.
The Closed Sicilian
Boris Spassky had great success on both sides of the Closed Sicilian, always seeming to win the game with white or black by a single tempo. The name of the opening suggests a passive approach, but the games in this line tend to be very sharp and double edged, with white attacking on the kingside and black on the queenside. Black's attack sometimes seems to succeed more quickly, but the presence of the white king on the kingside gives black more to do than just break through the pawn structure.
The Spanish Exchange
In 1998, English IM Andrew Kinsman produced a highly readable book on an important opening, the Spanish Exchange. After the standard opening moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6, Fischer, Timman, Shirov and others have helped to champion a line that rewards understanding, not just rote memorization.
Blockade
Aron Nimzovich's first published book? Most might say My System but in fact, earlier in 1925, Nimzovich published Blockade. It was a short work and was quite scarce until my uncle, Dr. Joseph Platz, translated it from the original German into English.
Isolated Pawns
Yesterday, I gave some tips on fighting against isolated pawns. If only it were that simple. It's complicated enough that GM A. Mikhalchishin and two other authors have provided an impressive tour of the issues related to isolated pawns.
Five Steps to Victory
On the main Chess is Fun instruction site, I take visitors through the five steps to victory. (1) Identify the weakness; (2) Fix the weakness; (3) Attack the weakness with your pieces; (4) that will force your opponent to defend the weakness with his pieces; (5) then AND ONLY THEN attack the weakness with a pawn.
Chess Blog: Exploiting Small Advantages
In 1985, GM Eduard Gufeld produced a fascinating manual, Exploiting Small Advantages that offers 80 examples of the kind of careful technique required to achieve consistent results. If you are lucky enough to find this book, you will find gems that do not often appear in databases.
Chess Blog: Solitaire Chess
Horowitz's column in Chess Review, Solitaire Chess, was a fixture for decades. In each column, he presented one game, usually a classic encounter, with instructions inviting the reader to play through the game, one move at a time, with a specified number of points for each move. Readers could then compare their scores with others and judge their progress from month to month.
Chess Blog: 1001 Brilliant Ways to Ckeckmate
The best way to improve your chess tactics? Practice, practice, practice. For years, before every tournament, I used to review the positions in Reinfeld's books just to sharpen my tactical focus.
Chess Blog: Take my Rooks!
Here at Queensac, we adore queen sacrifices. Almost as exciting is the double-rook sac! Yassar Seirawan and Nikolay Minev have produced a compelling book, Take my Rooks!, devoted to this theme. They have found more than 130 games that involve the theme and help us to understand when it works, when it doesn't, and what some players missed along the way.
Chess Blog: The Art of the Attack
In 1965, Vladimir Vukovic authored perhaps the premier manual on tactics, The Art of Attack in Chess. More than just a presentation on how to attack a castled king, he classifies attacks and focuses upon grandmaster games to illustrate his points. He provides a special section on the games of Capablanca and Alekhine, a real treat for those who have not yet seen these games.
Chess Blog: Super Nezh, Chess Assassin
Five time Russian champion Rashid Nezhmetdinov sustained his standing atop the world of chess by attacking... always attacking. As the story goes, he defeated Mikhail Tal so many times that Tal hired him as his trainer.
Chess Blog: Russian Chess League
Today's game was no exception, but I call your attention to the diagram. That position dwelled on our screen for about 30 minutes. I wish that I could tell you that my students and I figured out all the complications. The fact is, I wound up devoting a few afternoon hours to the task and, indeed, there were a more than a few surprises that we had missed.
Chess Blog: Winning with the Najdorf
There are many books on the Najdorf. Today, I focus on one, a 1993 effort by Danny King Winning with the Najdorf. He reviews all of the main lines in 61 well annotated games played between the early 1940s and the mid 1990s.
each player has his own pieces positioned along the two rows of the board (called ranks) that are closest to him. All 8 pawns are placed on the innermost rank of the 2. The rest of the pieces are placed closest to the player in the following order: Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen, King, Bishop, Knight, and Rook. This order is from left to right for WHITE and from right to left for BLACK, so that the same pieces are opposed on each column (called a file) of the board.
To facilitate descriptions of positions the 'algebraic notation' was invented. It is easy to learn and helps to identify squares and pieces on the board. It works like this: viewing from WHITE's perspective, the leftmost file is designated 'a', the next one 'b' and so on until we reach the rightmost file, which is file 'h'. The rank that is closest to WHITE is 'rank 1', or the first rank. Next comes 'rank 2' (the second rank) and so on until we get to the eighth rank, which is the rank closest to BLACK.
Now that we have appropriately designated the ranks and files we may identify a square by looking up the rank and the file to which it belongs. Thus, still viewing from WHITE's side, the bottom left square is the square 'a1', since it belongs to file 'a' and to the first rank. Its adjacent squares are 'b1' on the right and 'a2' just above it.
Your goal is to trap the enemy King -- it's that simple. But that is a story for another day.
Ron King is a full-time researcher, writer, and web developer. Visit Learn-Chess-Now to learn more about this fascinating game.
Copyright 2005 Ron King. This article may be reprinted if the resource box is left intact.
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