Chess

Chess is an abstract strategy board game and mind sport for two players. It emerged in South Europe in the second half of 15th century based on similar, much older games of Asian origin and is also called Western Chess or International Chess to distinguish it from its predecessors and from o

ther chess variants. Chess is one of the world's most popular board games; it is played both for recreation and competitively in clubs, tournaments, online, and by mail or e-mail (correspondence chess). Being a war game, it is also both amateur and professional sport and has aspects of art in the chess composition and of science in its developed theory. Moreover it is advocated as a way of enhancing mental prowess. The game of chess is played on a chessboard, consisting of eight times eight squares. Each player begins the game with sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. One player controls the white pieces and the other player controls the black pieces; the player that controls white is the first to move. The players alternate moving pieces to either an unoccupied square, or one occupied by an opponent's piece, capturing it, which is removing it from the chessboard. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king. This occurs when the king is under immediate attack (in check) and there is no way to remove it from attack on the next move. Chess was a part of the aristocratic culture since Middle Ages, and since then it has influenced Western culture and arts. During the centuries, theoreticians developed both chess strategy and tactics into an extensive science while chess composition created an ideal of beauty in chess. There is a long tradition of chess competitions and matches, reaching back into the 16th century. The first official World Chess Champion Wilhelm Steinitz claimed his title in 1886 and today's Vladimir Kramnik is the 14th Champion in the lineage. There are also biennial top team events, Chess Olympiads, the most recent one being the 37th Chess Olympiad in 2006, where Armenia won the unrestricted event and Ukraine the women's one. Since 20th century, international organizations World Chess Federation and International Correspondence Chess Federation exist, who control the top competitions and international titles in the chess sport. Since the 1950s, one of the goals of early computer scientists was to create a chess-playing machine, and today's chess is deeply influenced by the overwhelming abilities of current chess programs. A match between Garry Kasparov, then World Champion, and a machine in 1997 proved that computers are able to beat even the strongest human players. Computers also enabled the rapid development of internet chess in recent years.