Images chess 3 players

The 2013 Tata Steel Chess is taking place from 12-27 January in Wijk Aan Zee in the Netherlands. This famous annual tournament has three separate single round-robin competitions, the A, B, and C Groups, each featuring 14 players. The strongest tournament is the A Group and this year features 6 out of the top 10 ranked players; world champion Vishy Anand, world #1 Magnus Carlsen, defending champion Lev Aronian, rising star Fabiano Caruana,...

End game

The endgame (or end game or ending) is the stage of the game when there are few pieces left on the board. There are three main strategic differences between earlier stages of the game and endgame: During the endgame, pawns become more important; endgames often revolve around attempting to promote a pawn by advancing it to the eighth rank. The king, which has to be protected in the middlegame owing to the threat of...

Middlegame

The middlegame is the part of the game which starts after the opening. There is no clear line between the opening and the middlegame, but typically the middlegame will start when most pieces have been developed. (Similarly, there is no clear transition from the middlegame to the endgame; see start of the endgame.)  Because the opening theory has ended, players have to form plans based on the features of the position, and at the same time...

Opening

Main article: Chess opening A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a game (the "opening moves"). Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings and have been given names such as the Ruy Lopez or Sicilian Defence. They are catalogued in reference works such as the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings. There are dozens of different openings, varying widely in character from quiet positional play (for example, the Réti Opening)...

Possibility of developing an attack

Chess strategy is concerned with evaluation of chess positions and with setting up goals and long-term plans for the future play. During the evaluation, players must take into account numerous factors such as the value of the pieces on the board, control of the center and centralization, the pawn structure, king safety, and the control of key squares or groups of squares (for example, diagonals, open files, and dark or light squares). The...

Strategy and tactics

Chess strategy consists of setting and achieving long-term positioning advantages during the game – for example, where to place different pieces – while tactics concentrate on immediate maneuver. These two parts of the chess-playing process cannot be completely separated, because strategic goals are mostly achieved by the means of tactics, while the tactical opportunities are based on the previous strategy of play. A game of chess is normally divided...

Notation for recording moves

Naming the squares in algebraic chess notation Chess games and positions are recorded using a special notation, most often algebraic chess notation. Abbreviated (or short) algebraic notation generally records moves in the format "abbreviation of the piece moved – file where it moved – rank where it moved". For example, Qg5 means "queen moves to the g-file and 5th rank" (that is, to the square g5). If...

End of the game

abcdefgh 88 77 66 55 44 33 22 11 abcdefgh White is in checkmate. He cannot escape from being attacked by the Black king and bishops. abcdefgh 88 77 66 55 44 33 22 11 abcdefgh Stalemate if it is Black to move. It isnot checkmate, and since Black cannot move, the game is a draw. Although the objective of the game is to checkmate the opponent, chess games do not have to end in checkmate—either player may resign which...