Half-open File
In chess, a half-open file (or semi-open file) is a with pawns of only one color. The half-open file can provide a line of attack for a player's rook or queen. A half-open file is generally exploited by the player with no pawns on it. Many openings, such as the Sicilian Defense, aim to complicate the position. In the main line Sicilian, 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 (or 2...e6, or 2...Nc6) 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4, White obtains a half-open d-file, but Black can pressure White along the half-open c-file. In positions where White has no pawns on a file but Black has one pawn or more on that file, the position is considered to be half-opened for White. In cases where Black has no pawns on a file but White has one or more pawns on that file, the position is considered to be half-opened for Black. A ''pawn break'' occurs when a pawn captures or advances in a way that opens or half-opens one or more files. The demolition of the pawn structure is a common theme in positions with half-open files, si ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chess
Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid. The players, referred to as White and Black in chess, "White" and "Black", each control sixteen Chess piece, pieces: one king (chess), king, one queen (chess), queen, two rook (chess), rooks, two bishop (chess), bishops, two knight (chess), knights, and eight pawn (chess), 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 (chess), draw. The recorded history of chess goes back to at least the emergence of chaturanga—also thought to be an ancesto ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pawn (chess)
The pawn (♙, ♟) is the most numerous and weakest piece in the game of chess. It may move one square directly forward, it may move two squares directly forward on its first move, and it may capture one square diagonally forward. Each player begins a game with eight pawns, one on each square of their second . The white pawns start on a2 through h2; the black pawns start on a7 through h7. Individual pawns are referred to by the on which they stand. For example, one speaks of "White's f-pawn" or "Black's b-pawn". Alternatively, they can be referred to by the piece which stood on that file at the beginning of the game, e.g. "White's king bishop's pawn" or "Black's queen knight's pawn". It is also common to refer to a ''rook's pawn'', meaning any pawn on the a- or h-files, a ''knight's pawn'' (on the b- or g-files), a ''bishop's pawn'' (on the c- or f-files), a ''queen's pawn'' (on the d-file), a ''king's pawn'' (on the e-file), and a ''central pawn'' (on the d- or e-files). The p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rook (chess)
The rook (; ♖, ♜) is a piece in the game of chess. It may move any number of squares horizontally or vertically without jumping, and it may an enemy piece on its path; it may participate in castling. Each player starts the game with two rooks, one in each corner on their side of the board. Formerly, the rook (from ) was alternatively called the ''tower'', ''marquess'', ''rector'', and ''comes'' (''count'' or ''earl''). The term "castle" is considered to be informal or old-fashioned. Placement and movement The white rooks start on the squares a1 and h1, while the black rooks start on a8 and h8. The rook moves horizontally or vertically, through any number of unoccupied squares. The rook cannot jump over pieces. The rook may capture an enemy piece by moving to the square on which the enemy piece stands, removing it from play. The rook also participates with the king in a special move called castling, wherein it is transferred to the square crossed by the king after th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Queen (chess)
The queen (♕, ♛) is the most powerful piece in the game of chess. It can move any number of squares vertically, horizontally or , combining the powers of the rook and bishop. Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of the first next to the king. Because the queen is the strongest piece, a pawn is promoted to a queen in the vast majority of cases; if a pawn is promoted to a piece other than a queen, it is an underpromotion. The predecessor to the queen is the '' ferz'', a weak piece only able to move or capture one step diagonally, originating from the Persian game of shatranj. The queen acquired its modern move in Spain in the 15th century. Placement and movement The white queen starts on d1, while the black queen starts on d8. With the chessboard oriented correctly, the white queen starts on a white square and the black queen starts on a black square—thus the mnemonics "queen gets her color", "queen on er wncolor", or "the dress uee ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Opening (chess)
The opening is the initial stage of a chess game. It usually consists of established theory. The other phases are the middlegame and the endgame. Many opening sequences, known as ''openings'', have standard names such as "Sicilian Defense". ''The Oxford Companion to Chess'' lists 1,327 named openings and variants, and there are many others with varying degrees of common usage. Opening moves that are considered standard are referred to as "book moves", or simply "book". When a game begins to deviate from known opening theory, the players are said to be "out of book". In some openings, book lines have been worked out for over 30 moves, such as some lines in the classical King's Indian Defense and in the Najdorf Variation of the Sicilian Defense. Professional chess players spend years studying openings, and they continue doing so throughout their careers as opening theory continues to evolve. Players at the club level also study openings, but the importance of the opening phas ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sicilian Defense
The Sicilian Defence is a chess opening that begins with the following moves: :1. e4 c5 The Sicilian is the most popular and best-scoring response to White's first move 1.e4. The opening 1.d4 is a statistically more successful opening for White because of the high success rate of the Sicilian defence against 1.e4. '' New In Chess'' stated in its 2000 Yearbook that, of the games in its database, White scored 56.1% in 296,200 games beginning 1.d4, but 54.1% in 349,855 games beginning 1.e4, mainly because the Sicilian held White to a 52.3% score in 145,996 games. 17% of all games between grandmasters, and 25% of the games in the Chess Informant database, begin with the Sicilian. Grandmaster John Nunn attributes the Sicilian Defence's popularity to its "combative nature": "in many lines Black is playing not just for equality, but for the advantage. The drawback is that White often obtains an early initiative, so Black has to take care not to fall victim to a quick attack." Gran ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pawn Structure
In a game of chess, the pawn structure (sometimes known as the pawn skeleton) is the configuration of pawn (chess), pawns on the chessboard. Because pawns are the least mobile of the chess pieces, the pawn structure is relatively static and thus plays a large role in determining the strategic character of the position. General observations Weaknesses in the pawn structure, such as Isolated pawn, isolated, Doubled pawns, doubled, or Backward pawn, backward pawns and , once created, are usually permanent. Care must therefore be taken to avoid them (but there are exceptions—for instance see ''Boleslavsky hole'' below). In the absence of these structural weaknesses, it is not possible to assess a pawn formation as good or bad—much depends on the position of the pieces. The pawn formation does determine the overall strategies of the players to a large extent, however, even if arising from unrelated openings. Pawn formations symmetrical about a vertical line (such as the #e5-chain, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Doubled Pawns
In chess, doubled pawns are two pawns of the same color residing on the same file. Pawns can become doubled only when one pawn captures onto a file on which another friendly pawn resides. In the diagram, the white pawns on the b-file and e-file are doubled. The pawns on the are doubled and isolated. In most cases, doubled pawns are considered a weakness due to their inability to defend each other. This inability, in turn, makes it more difficult to achieve a breakthrough which could create a passed pawn (often a deciding factor in endgames). In the case of isolated doubled pawns, these problems are only further aggravated. Several chess strategies and openings are based on burdening the opponent with doubled pawns, a strategic weakness. There are, however, cases where accepting doubled pawns can be advantageous because doing so may open up a file for a rook, or because the doubled pawns perform a useful function, such as defending important squares. Also, if the opponent i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Isolated Pawns
In chess, an isolated pawn is a pawn that has no friendly pawn on an adjacent . Isolated pawns are usually a weakness because they cannot be protected by other pawns. The square in front of the pawn may become a good outpost for the opponent to anchor pieces. Isolated pawns most often become weaker in the endgame, as there are fewer pieces available to protect the pawn. Isolated pawns can, however, provide improved and associated opportunities for that offset or even outweigh their weaknesses. The files adjacent to the isolated pawn are either open or half-open, providing two lanes of attack for the rooks and the queen. The absence of adjacent pawns may also aid mobilization of the player's knights and bishops. An isolated pawn on the d-file is called an isolated queen pawn or simply an isolani. In addition to the open or half-open c- and e-files, the isolated queen pawn can provide good outposts on the c- and e-file squares diagonally forward of the pawn, which are especi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Loek Van Wely
Loek van Wely (born 7 October 1972) is a Dutch chess player and politician. He was awarded the title Grandmaster by FIDE in 1993, and was rated among the world's top ten in 2001 with a rating of 2714. In March 2019, he was elected to the Dutch Senate for the right-wing Forum for Democracy; however, on 8 December 2020 he switched his party allegiance to the van Pareren group, which is now affiliated with the right-wing JA21 party. Chess career He has won the Dutch Chess Championship on eight occasions: six consecutive times from 2000 through 2005, in 2014 and in 2017. In 2002, in Maastricht, Netherlands, van Wely took on the computer program Rebel in a four-game match, scoring 2/4 (+2–2=0). In 2005, he led the Dutch team to victory at the European Team Championship in Gothenburg, Sweden. Van Wely participated in the elite tournament held in Wijk aan Zee (originally named Hoogovens, then Corus, now Tata Steel) 25 times, consecutively from 1992 to 2010 and again from 2012 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Judit Polgár
Judit Polgár (born 23 July 1976) is a Hungarian Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, widely regarded as the Strong (chess), strongest female chess player of all time. In 1991, Polgár achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years and 4 months, at the time the youngest to have done so, breaking the record previously held by former world champion Bobby Fischer. She was the youngest player ever to break into the FIDE top 100 players rating list, ranking No. 55 in the January 1989 rating list, at the age of 12. Polgár is the only woman to have been a serious candidate for the World Chess Championship, in which she participated in FIDE World Chess Championship 2005, 2005; she had previously participated in large, 100-player-plus knockout tournaments for the world championship. She is also the only woman to have surpassed 2700 Elo rating system, Elo, reaching a peak world ranking of No. 8 in 2004 and peak rating of 2735 in 2005. She is the only woman to be ranked in th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |