Sofia Rules
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Sofia Rules
A game of chess can end in a draw by agreement. A player may offer a draw at any stage of a game; if the opponent accepts, the game is a draw. In some competitions, draws by agreement are restricted; for example draw offers may be subject to the discretion of the arbiter, or may be forbidden before move 30, or even forbidden altogether. The majority of draws in chess are by agreement. Under FIDE rules, a draw should be offered after making the move and before pressing the game clock, then marked in the scoresheet as ''(=)''. However, draw offers made at any time are valid. If a player offers a draw before making a move, the opponent has the option of requesting a move before deciding whether or not to accept the offer. Once made, a draw offer cannot be retracted and is valid until rejected. A player may offer a draw by asking, "Would you like a draw?", or similar; the French word ''remis'' (literally "reset") is internationally understood as a draw offer and may be used if the pl ...
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Chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games, such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. The rules of chess as we know them today 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, played by millions of people worldwide. Chess is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no use of dice or cards. It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, t ...
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My 60 Memorable Games
''My 60 Memorable Games'' is a chess book by Bobby Fischer, first published in 1969. It is a collection of his games dating from the 1957 New Jersey Open to the 1967 Sousse Interzonal. Unlike many players' anthologies, which are often titled ''My Best Games'' and include only wins or draws, ''My 60 Memorable Games'' includes nine draws and three losses. It has been described as a "classic of objective and painstaking analysis" and is regarded as one of the great pieces of chess literature. The book was originally published in descriptive notation. An algebraic notation version in 1995 caused some controversy in the chess world because of the many other changes made to the text, with Fischer himself denouncing the edition. In 2008 a reissue of Fischer's original text was published, the only changes being the updating to algebraic notation and the correcting of typographical errors, notation mistakes, and the erroneous last few moves of game 17. Writing The book had been planned f ...
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Lajos Portisch
Lajos Portisch (born 4 April 1937) is a Hungarian chess Grandmaster, whose positional style earned him the nickname, the "Hungarian Botvinnik". One of the strongest non-Soviet players from the early 1960s into the late 1980s, he participated in twelve consecutive Interzonals from 1962 through 1993, qualifying for the World Chess Championship Candidates Cycle a total of eight times (1965, 1968, 1974, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1985, and 1988). Portisch set several all-time records in Chess Olympiads. In Hungarian Chess Championships, he either shared the title or won it outright a total of eight times (1958, 1959, 1961, 1964, 1965, 1971, 1975, and 1981). He won many strong international tournaments during his career. In 2004, Portisch was awarded the title of ' Nemzet Sportolója' (Sportsman of the Nation), Hungary's highest national sports achievement award. He still competes occasionally. His main hobby is singing operatic arias; he has a fine baritone voice, a quality shared by Vasi ...
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Boris Spassky
Boris Vasilievich Spassky ( rus, Бори́с Васи́льевич Спа́сский, Borís Vasíl'yevich Spásskiy; born January 30, 1937) is a Russian chess grandmaster who was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from 1969 to 1972. Spassky played three world championship matches: he lost to Tigran Petrosian in 1966; defeated Petrosian in 1969 to become world champion; then lost to Bobby Fischer in a famous match in 1972. Spassky won the Soviet Chess Championship twice outright (1961, 1973), and twice lost in playoffs (1956, 1963), after tying for first place during the event proper. He was a World Chess Championship candidate on seven occasions (1956, 1965, 1968, 1974, 1977, 1980 and 1985). In addition to his candidates wins in 1965 and 1968, Spassky reached the semi-final stage in 1974 and the final stage in 1977. Spassky immigrated to France in 1976, becoming a French citizen in 1978. He continued to compete in tournaments but was no longer a major ...
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Piatigorsky Cup
The Piatigorsky Cup was a triennial series of double round-robin grandmaster chess tournaments held in the United States in the 1960s. Sponsored by the Piatigorsky Foundation, only two events were held, in 1963 and 1966. The Piatigorsky Cups were the strongest U.S. chess tournaments since New York 1927. Jacqueline Piatigorsky (née Rothschild) was married to cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. One of the strongest woman chess players in the U.S. and a regular competitor in the U.S. Women's Chess Championship, she designed the cup and was the primary organizer of the tournament. The prize funds were among the largest of any chess tournament up to that time. Every player was guaranteed a prize and all traveling and living expenses were paid. Los Angeles 1963 The First Piatigorsky Cup was held in The Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles in July 1963. The tournament field of eight included players from five countries. The Soviet representatives Paul Keres and World Champion Tigran Petrosia ...
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Checkmate
Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with ) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game. In chess, the king is never actually captured—the player loses as soon as the player's king is checkmated. In formal games, it is usually considered good etiquette to resign an inevitably lost game before being checkmated. If a player is not in check but has no legal move, then it is '' stalemate'', and the game immediately ends in a draw. A checkmating move is recorded in algebraic notation using the hash symbol "#", for example: 34.Qg3#. Examples A checkmate may occur in as few as two moves on one side with all of the pieces still on the board (as in Fool's mate, in the opening phase of the game), in a middlegame position (as in the 1956 game called the Game of the Century between Donald Byrne and Bobby Fischer), or after many moves with as few as t ...
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Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, ( – May 5, 1995) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster. The sixth World Chess Champion, he also worked as an electrical engineer and computer scientist and was a pioneer in computer chess. Botvinnik was the first world-class player to develop within the Soviet Union. He also played a major role in the organization of chess, making a significant contribution to the design of the World Chess Championship system after World War II and becoming a leading member of the coaching system that enabled the Soviet Union to dominate top-class chess during that time. His pupils include World Champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik. Early years Botvinnik was born on August 17, 1911, in what was then Kuokkala, Vyborg Governorate, Grand Duchy of Finland, now the district of Repino in Saint Petersburg. His parents were Russian Jews; his father, Moisei Botvinnik (1878–1931), was a dental technician and his mother, Shifra (Se ...
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Peter Clarke (chess Player)
Peter Hugh Clarke (18 March 1933 – 11 December 2014) was an English chess player who held the titles of FIDE Master, International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster (1980), FIDE International Arbiter (1976) and Chess Olympiad individual silver medal winner (1956). Biography Peter Hugh Clarke started playing chess at the age of six. He twice won the London Boys' Chess Championship (1950, 1951). He participated in the British Chess Championship multiple times, winning five silver medals. Since 1959, Peter Hugh Clarke has worked as a chess journalist for the newspaper ''Sunday Times'' for the magazine ''British Chess Magazine''. He is known as a biographer of Mikhail Tal (1961) and Tigran Petrosian (1964). Thanks to his good knowledge of the Russian language, he translated a book about Vasily Smyslov in 1958. In 1963, he wrote the book ''100 Soviet Chess Miniatures''. Peter Hugh Clarke played for England in the Chess Olympiads: * in 1954, at the second reserve board in the 11th C ...
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Time Trouble
In chess played with a time control, time trouble, time pressure, or its German translation ''Zeitnot'', is the situation where a player has little time to complete the required moves. When forced to play quickly, the probability of making blunders is increased, so handling the clock is an important aspect of chess playing. The last move of the time control (often move 40) is especially prone to blunders if players only have a few seconds to play it, and many games have been lost due to poor time management in time pressure. Practical aspects Players often spend large amounts of time after the opening as they consider their plans and calculate various tactical variations. In many cases, spending this time to find the correct path is worth the risk of time trouble later on if the position is simplified to a point where it can be played quickly. However, spending large amounts of time in simple positions on non-forcing matters is often excessive. In time trouble, players are usually ...
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Edmar Mednis
Edmar John Mednis ( lv, Edmārs Džons Mednis; March 22, 1937 – February 13, 2002) was a Latvian-American chess player and writer of Latvian origin. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 1980. Biography Mednis' family were refugees in 1944 during World War II. As displaced persons, Edmar and his two sisters, with parents Edvin and Marita Mednis, were permitted to emigrate to the United States in 1950. Mednis was trained as a chemical engineer, then worked as a stockbroker, but became best known as a chess author. He wrote 26 chess books, including ''Practical Rook Endings'' (1982) and ''Strategic Chess: Mastering the Closed Game'' (1993), and hundreds of chess articles. He and Robert Byrne annotated many games for ''Chess Informant''. Mednis finished second in the 1955 World Junior Championship behind Boris Spassky (the two drew their game). He was the first player to beat Bobby Fischer in a U.S. Championship. He played on the 1962 US team at the 15th C ...
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World Chess Championship 1978
The 1978 World Chess Championship was played between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi in Baguio, Philippines from July 18 to October 18, 1978. Karpov won, thereby retaining the title. The match had many bizarre incidents. Karpov's team included noted Soviet psychologist and hypnotherapist Vladimir Petrovich Zukhar (Владимир Петрович Зухарь), while Korchnoi enlisted the help of two American Ananda Marga yoga specialists who had recently been convicted of attempted murder and released on bail. There was more controversy off the board, with histrionics ranging from X-raying of chairs, protests about the flags used on the board and Korchnoi's complaints that Zukhar, sitting in the front row, attempted to hypnotise him. When Karpov's team sent him a blueberry yogurt during a game without any request for one by Karpov, the Korchnoi team protested, claiming it could be some kind of code. They later said this was intended as a parody of earlier protests, but it wa ...
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Candidates Tournament
The Candidates Tournament (or in some periods Candidates Matches) is a chess tournament organized by FIDE, chess's international governing body, since 1950, as the final contest to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship. The winner of the Candidates earns the right to a match for the World Championship against the incumbent World Champion. Before 1993 it was contested as a triennial tournament; almost always held every third year from 1950 to 1992 inclusive. After the split of the World Championship in the early 1990s, the cycles were disrupted, even after the reunification of the titles in 2006. Since 2013 it has settled into a 2-year cycle: qualification for Candidates during the odd numbered year, Candidates played early in the even numbered year, and the World Championship match played late in the even numbered year. The latter half of the 2020 Candidates Tournament got suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was only played in April 2021.
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