Portal:Chess

Welcome to the Chess Portal

Introduction

Left to right: white king, black rook, black queen, white pawn, black knight, white bishop

Chess is a board game for two players, played on a square board consisting of 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid. The players, referred to as "White" and "Black", each control sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns, with each piece type 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.

The recorded history of chess dates back to the emergence of chaturanga in 7th-century India. Chaturanga is also thought to be an ancestor of similar games like janggi, xiangqi, and shogi. After its introduction to Persia, it spread to the Arab world and then to Europe. The modern rules of chess emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, becoming standardized and gaining universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, with millions of players worldwide.

Organized chess arose in the 19th century. International chess competitions today are governed by the International Chess Federation FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs). The first universally recognized World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886; Gukesh Dommaraju is the current World Champion, having won the title in 2024. (Full article...)

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Grandmaster (GM) is a title awarded to chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Apart from World Champion, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain. Once achieved, the title is held for life, though on rare occasions the title has been revoked for cheating.

The title of Grandmaster, along with the lesser FIDE titles of International Master (IM), FIDE Master (FM), and Candidate Master (CM), is open to all players regardless of gender. The great majority of grandmasters are men, but 44 women have been awarded the GM title as of 2025, out of a total of about 2000 grandmasters. There is also a Woman Grandmaster title with lower requirements awarded only to women. (Full article...)

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General images

The following are images from various chess-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Shams-i Tabrīzī as portrayed in a 1500 painting in a page of a copy of Rumi's poem dedicated to Shams (from History of chess)
Image 2A Chess Dispute (1903) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 3Bauhaus chess set by Josef Hartwig (from Chess in the arts)
Image 4Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, 1555, National Museum, Poznań, Poland (from Chess in the arts)
Image 5John Lavery, 1929, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 6Two Georgian writers, Ilia Chavchavadze and Ivane Machabeli, playing chess in Saint Petersburg, 1873 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 7The 12th-century Lewis chessmen in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland (from History of chess)
Image 8RZA at a Hip Hop Chess Federation Tournament (from Chess in the arts)
Image 9Honoré Daumier, 1863, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 10Liberale da Verona, The Chess Players, c. 1475 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 11Niccolò di Pietro, 1413–15, The Conversion of Saint Augustin, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (from Chess in the arts)
Image 12Chess game between Tha'ālibī and Bākhazarī, 1896 painting by Ludwig Deutsch (from History of chess)
Image 13Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess (1473) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 14Cocowood chess set (Philippine craft) (from Chess in the arts)
Image 15Iranian shatranj set, glazed fritware, 12th century, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (from History of chess)
Image 16Lucas van Leyden, c. 1508, The Game of Chess, oil on oak, 27 x 35 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 17Stamp of the USSR devoted to the accomplished Estonian player and analyst Paul Keres, 1991 (from History of chess)
Image 18Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official World Chess Champion (from History of chess)
Image 19Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from History of chess)
Image 20Current world champion Gukesh Dommaraju (from History of chess)
Image 21Hans Muelich, 1552, Duke Albrecht V. of Bavaria and his wife Anna of Austria playing chess (from Chess in the arts)
Image 22These seven ivory chess pieces are the oldest known, dating to about 700 CE. The ivory came from India. They were excavated in 1977 by archaeologist Yuriy Buryakov, at Afrasiyab in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. They are housed today at the Samarkand State Museum. Photographed during a loan of the pieces to the Silk Roads Exhibition at the British Museum. (from History of chess)
Image 23Thomas Eakins, 1876, The Chess Players (from Chess in the arts)
Image 24Zulfi Bhutto gifted this carved ivory set to Gerald Ford in 1975. (from Chess in the arts)
Image 25Paris Bordone, c. 1545, Chess players, oil on canvas, Mailand, Wohnhaus (from Chess in the arts)
Image 26Final match of the 1575 tournament in El Escorial. Painting by Luigi Mussini. (from History of chess)
Image 27An illustration from a Persian manuscript "A treatise on chess". The Ambassadors from India present the Chatrang to Khosrow I Anushirwan, "Immortal Soul", King of Persia. (from History of chess)
Image 28Some of the earliest examples of chess-related art are medieval illustrations accompanying books or manuscripts, such as this chess problem from the 1283 Libro de los juegos. (from Chess in the arts)
Image 29Persian manuscript from the 14th century describing how an ambassador from India brought chess to the Persian court (from History of chess)
Image 30Krishna and Radha playing chaturanga on an 8×8 ashtāpada (from History of chess)
Image 31Antonis Mor, 1549, Von Sachsen vs. a Spaniard (from Chess in the arts)
Image 32Moors from Andalusia playing chess, Book of Games by King Alfonso X, 1283 (from Chess in the arts)
Image 33Pieces designed by Man Ray (from Chess in the arts)
Image 34Richard Creifelds, c. 1886, The Veterans, Brooklyn Museum (from Chess in the arts)
Image 35Bobby Fischer vs. Mikhail Tal (from History of chess)
Image 36Iranian courtiers of the Qajar dynasty playing chess in Mazandaran (from History of chess)
Image 37Karel van Mander, 1600 (attributed to), Les joueurs d'échecs (from Chess in the arts)
Image 38Edward Harrison May, 1867, Lady Howe mating Benjamin Franklin (from Chess in the arts)
Image 39Animation of the Immortal Game, in which Adolf Anderssen, playing White, beat Lionel Kieseritzky in June 1851 (from History of chess)
Image 40World Champions José Raúl Capablanca (left) and Emanuel Lasker in 1925 (from History of chess)
Image 41The Chess Players by Henry Fox Talbot, 1847 (from History of chess)

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FIDE world ranking

Rank	Player	Rating
1	Magnus Carlsen	2841
2	Fabiano Caruana	2792
3	Hikaru Nakamura	2792
4	Javokhir Sindarov	2777
5	Nodirbek Abdusattorov	2777
6	Vincent Keymer	2767
7	Anish Giri	2764
8	Arjun Erigaisi	2761
9	Wesley So	2753
10	Wei Yi	2753
11	Alireza Firouzja	2744
12	Hans Moke Niemann	2742
13	Viswanathan Anand	2739
14	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	2739
15	Ding Liren	2738
16	R Praggnanandhaa	2735
17	Ian Nepomniachtchi	2733
18	Leinier Domínguez	2732
19	Gukesh Dommaraju	2732
20	Lê Quang Liêm	2731

Did you know...

... that there have been attempts to make chess an Olympic sport since at least 1924?
... that the Chess World Cup 1988–1989 featured a game of human chess between Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman?

Reviewed articles

Featured articles	Good articles
First-move advantage in chess	42nd Chess Olympiad	Goryachkina, Aleksandra
Gossip, George H. D.	43rd Chess Olympiad	Guramishvili, Sopiko
List of female chess grandmasters	Abdumalik, Zhansaya	Kazarian, Anna-Maja
Mechanical Turk	Alekhine, Alexander	Kristjánsson, Stefán
44th Chess Olympiad	Anderssen, Adolf	Lasker, Emanuel
	Belenkaya, Dina	Mammadzada, Gunay
	Bindrich, Falko	Milner-Barry, Stuart
	Blübaum, Matthias	Modern Benoni
	Budapest Gambit	Muzychuk, Anna
	Bughouse chess	Nadanian, Ashot
	Carlsen, Magnus	Rudolf, Anna
	Chess in Armenia	Rules of chess
	Cramling, Anna	Staunton, Howard
	Deep Blue (Chess computer)	Steinitz, Wilhelm
	En passant	Turochamp
	Endgame tablebase	World Chess Championship 1972
	Fischer, Bobby	Zhou, Qiyu