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Sacrifice (chess)
In chess, a sacrifice is a move that gives up a piece with the objective of gaining tactical or positional compensation in other forms. A sacrifice could also be a deliberate exchange of a chess piece of higher value for an opponent's piece of lower value. Any chess piece except the king may be sacrificed. Because players usually try to hold on to their own pieces, offering a sacrifice can come as an unpleasant surprise to one's opponent, putting them off balance and causing them to waste precious time trying to calculate whether the sacrifice is sound or not, and whether to accept it. Sacrificing one's queen (the most valuable piece), or a string of pieces, adds to the surprise, and such games can be awarded . Types of sacrifice Real versus sham Rudolf Spielmann proposed a division between sham and real sacrifices: * In a ''real sacrifice'', the sacrificing player will often have to play on with less than their opponent for quite some time. * In a ''sham sacrifice'', t ...
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Philidor Defence
The Philidor Defence (or Philidor's Defence) is a chess opening characterised by the moves: :1. e4 e5 :2. Nf3 d6 The opening is named after the famous 18th-century player François-André Danican Philidor, who advocated it as an alternative to the common 2...Nc6. His original idea was to challenge White's by the pawn thrust ...f7–f5. Today, the Philidor is known as a but passive choice for Black, and is seldom seen in top-level play except as an alternative to the heavily analysed openings that can ensue after the normal 2...Nc6. It is considered a good opening for amateur players who seek a defensive strategy that is simpler and easier to understand than the complex positions that result from an opening such as the French Defence. The ''Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings'' code for Philidor Defence is C41. Use The Philidor occurred in one of the most famous games ever played, "The Opera Game" played in 1858 between the American chess master Paul Morphy and two strong a ...
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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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Larry Evans (chess Grandmaster)
Larry Melvyn Evans (March 22, 1932 – November 15, 2010) was an American chess player, author, and journalist who received the FIDE title of Grandmaster (GM) in 1957. He won or shared the U.S. Chess Championship five times and the U.S. Open Chess Championship four times. He wrote a long-running syndicated chess column and wrote or co-wrote more than twenty books on chess. Chess career Early years Evans was born on March 22, 1932 in Manhattan, the son of Bella (Shotl) and Harry Evans. His family was Jewish. He learned much about the game by playing for ten cents an hour on 42nd Street in New York City, quickly becoming a rising star. At age 14, he tied for 4th–5th place in the Marshall Chess Club championship. The next year he won it outright, becoming the youngest Marshall champion at that time. He also finished equal second in the U.S. Junior Championship, which led to an article in the September 1947 issue of Chess Review. At 16, he played in the 1948 U.S. Chess Champi ...
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ChessGames
Chessgames.com is an Internet chess community with over 224,000 members. The site maintains a large database of chess games, where each game has its own discussion page for comments and analysis. Limited primarily to games where at least one player is of master strength, the database begins with the earliest known recorded games and is updated with games from current top-level tournaments. Basic membership is free, and the site is open to players at all levels of ability, with additional features available for Premium members. While the primary purpose of Chessgames.com is to provide an outlet for chess discussion and analysis, consultation games are periodically organized with teams of members playing either other teams of members or very strong masters, including a former US champion and two former world correspondence champions. Members can maintain their own discussion pages, and there are features to assist study of openings, endgames and sacrifices. The front page also feat ...
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Peter Svidler
Pyotr Veniaminovich Svidler (russian: Пётр Вениами́нович Сви́длер; born 17 June 1976), commonly known as Peter Svidler, is a Russian chess grandmaster and an eight-time Russian Chess Champion who now frequently commentates on chess. Svidler has competed in three World Championship tournaments: in the period with split title the FIDE World Chess Championship 2002 and 2005, and after reunification the World Chess Championship 2007. He also played in three Candidates Tournaments, in 2013, 2014 and 2016. His best results at this level have been third in 2005 and 2013. Eight-time Russian Champion (1994, 1995, 1997, 2003, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2017), he has represented Russia at the Chess Olympiad ten times (1994-2010, 2014) winning five team gold medals, two team silvers and an individual bronze. Svidler won the Chess World Cup 2011, was runner-up in the World Blitz Championship in 2006 and won at Fontys Tilburg, Biel and Gibraltar. Svidler also tied for f ...
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Levon Aronian
Levon Grigori Aronian ( hy, Լևոն Գրիգորի Արոնյան, Levon Grigori Aronyan; born 6 October 1982) is an Armenians, Armenian Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, who currently plays for the United States Chess Federation. A chess prodigy, he earned the title of grandmaster in 2000, at age 17. Aronian held the No. 2 position in the March 2014 FIDE World Rankings, FIDE world chess rankings with a Elo rating system, rating of 2830, becoming the Comparison of top chess players throughout history#Elo system, fourth-highest rated player in history. Aronian won the FIDE World Cup in Chess World Cup 2005, 2005 and Chess World Cup 2017, 2017. He led the Armenia national team to the gold medals in the Chess Olympiads of 37th Chess Olympiad, 2006 (Turin), 38th Chess Olympiad, 2008 (Dresden) and 40th Chess Olympiad, 2012 (Istanbul) and at the World Team Chess Championship in Ningbo 2011. He won the FIDE Grand Prix 2008–2010, qualifying him for the Candidates Tournament for ...
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Tempo (chess)
In chess and other chess-like games, a tempo is a "turn" or single move (a half-move or ply made either by White or Black). When a player achieves a desired result in one fewer move, the player is said to "gain a tempo"; conversely, when a player takes one more move than necessary, the player is said to "lose a tempo". Similarly, when a player forces their opponent to make moves not according to their initial plan, one is said to "gain tempo" because the opponent is wasting moves. A move that gains a tempo is often called "a move with tempo". A simple example of losing a tempo may be moving a rook from the h1-square to h5 and from there to h8 in the first diagram; simply moving from h1 to h8 would have achieved the same result with a tempo to spare. However, such maneuvers do not always lose a tempo—the rook on h5 may make some threat which needs to be responded to. In this case, since both players have "lost" a tempo, the net result in terms of time is nil, but the change broug ...
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Clearance Sacrifice
In chess, a clearance sacrifice is a tactical motif which involves a square on the chessboard being vacated to open up lines of attack. The tactic may also result in the substitution of a piece hindering the attack by a piece useful to the attack. Example In the diagram, the clearance sacrifice 1.Rf8+ vacates the f7 square and, after 1...Rxf8 (better than 1...Bxf8 2.Qg8#), White utilizes the battery on the a2–g8 diagonal. After 2.Qg8+ Rxg8 (only move), White has a classic smothered mate In chess, a smothered mate is a checkmate delivered by a knight in which the mated king is unable to move because it is completely surrounded (or ''smothered'') by its own pieces. The mate is usually seen in a corner of the board, since fewer pie ... with 3.Nf7#, utilizing the f7 square vacated by the clearance sacrifice. References {{DEFAULTSORT:Clearance sacrifice Chess tactics ...
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Promotion (chess)
In chess, promotion is the replacement of a pawn with a new piece when the pawn is moved to its last . The player replaces the pawn immediately with a queen, rook, bishop, or knight of the same . The new piece does not have to be a previously captured piece. Promotion is mandatory; the pawn cannot remain as a pawn. Promotion to a queen is known as queening; promotion to any other piece is known as underpromotion. Promotion is almost always to a queen, as it is the most powerful piece. Underpromotion might be done for various reasons, such as to avoid stalemate or for tactical reasons related to the knight's unique movement pattern. Promotion or the threat of it often decides the result in an endgame. Rules When a pawn is promoted, it is removed from the board, and the new piece is placed on the square of promotion. A piece may be promoted to regardless of whether it has been captured. Consequently, a player might have two or more queens, or three or more rooks, bishops, or kni ...
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Draw (chess)
In chess, there are a number of ways that a game can end in a draw, neither player winning. Draws are codified by various rules of chess including stalemate (when the player to move is not in check but has no legal move), threefold repetition (when the same position occurs three times with the same player to move), and the fifty-move rule (when the last fifty successive moves made by both players contain no or pawn move). Under the standard FIDE rules, a draw also occurs in a dead position (when no sequence of legal moves can lead to checkmate), most commonly when neither player has sufficient to checkmate the opponent. Unless specific tournament rules forbid it, players may agree to a draw at any time. Ethical considerations may make a draw uncustomary in situations where at least one player has a reasonable chance of winning. For example, a draw could be called after a move or two, but this would likely be thought unsporting. In the 19th century, some tournaments, notably ...
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Fortress (chess)
In chess, a fortress is an endgame drawing technique in which the side behind in sets up a zone of protection that the opponent cannot penetrate. This might involve keeping the enemy king out of one's position, or a zone the enemy cannot force one out of (e.g. see the opposite-colored bishops example). An elementary fortress is a theoretically drawn (i.e. a ) position with reduced material in which a passive defense will maintain the draw. Fortresses commonly have the following characteristics: # Useful pawn are not possible. # If the stronger side has pawns, they are firmly blocked. # The stronger side's king cannot penetrate because it is either cut off or near the edge of the board. #Zugzwang positions cannot be forced because the defender has available. Fortresses pose a problem for computer chess: computers fail to recognize fortress-type positions and are unable to achieve the win against them despite claiming a winning advantage. Fortress in a corner Perhap ...
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Perpetual Check
In the game of chess, perpetual check is a situation in which one player can a draw by an unending series of checks. This typically arises when the player who is checking cannot deliver checkmate, and failing to continue the series of checks gives the opponent at least a chance to win. A draw by perpetual check is no longer one of the rules of chess; however, such a situation will eventually allow a draw claim by either threefold repetition or the fifty-move rule. Players usually agree to a draw long before that, however. Perpetual check can also occur in other forms of chess, although the rules relating to it might be different. For example, giving perpetual check is not allowed in shogi and xiangqi, where doing so leads to an automatic loss for the giver. Examples In this diagram, Black is ahead a rook, a bishop, and a pawn, which would normally be a decisive advantage. But White, to move, can draw by perpetual check: : 1. Qe8+ Kh7 : 2. Qh5+ Kg8 : 3. Qe8+ etc. The same po ...
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