ChesS

#REDIRECT Chess

Chess

: ''For other meanings, see Chess (disambiguation).'' Chess is a board game and mental-skill game for two players. It is played on a square Chessboard of 8 rows (called ''ranks'') and 8 columns (called ''files''), giving 64 squares of alternating colour, light and dark, with each player having a light square at his bottom right when facing the board. Each player begins the game with 16 Chess piece that each move and capture other pieces on the board in a unique way: eight pawn (chess), two knight (chess), two bishop (chess), two rook (chess), one queen (chess) and one king (chess). One player controls the white pieces; the other player controls the black pieces. The object of the game is to achieve checkmate. This occurs when a king is attacked and it cannot escape capture. Note that checkmate renders the capture of the king unnecessary since it is a foregone conclusion and the game ends at that time. == Introduction == Chess is not a game of chance; it is based solely on Chess tactic and strategy. Nevertheless, the game is so complex that not even the best players can consider all contingencies: although only 64 squares and 32 pieces are on the board, the number of possible games that can be played far exceeds the number of atoms in the universe (see "Shannon number"). Chess is one of the world's most popularity games; it has been described not only as a game, but also as an art, science, and sport. Chess is sometimes seen as an Abstract strategy wargame; as a "mind martial art", and teaching chess has been advocated as a Chess as mental training. Chess is played both recreationally and competitively in Chess club, tournaments, online, and Play by mail game (correspondence chess). Many Chess variant and relatives of chess are played throughout the world. The most popular, in descending order by number of players, are Xiangqi (in China), Shogi (in Japan), and Janggi (in Korea). == History == :''Main article: Origins of chess'' [[Image:Youth at chess with suitors - Haft Awrang.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Persian youth playing chess with two suitors Illustration to the "Haft Awrang" of Jami, in the story ''A Father Advises his Son About Love'' Freer and Sackler Galleries, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.]] Many countries claim to have invented the chess game in some incipient form. The most commonly held belief is that Chess originated in India, where it was called Chaturanga, which appears to have been invented in the 6th century AD. A theory that chess arose in China earlier, arose because when chess spread to China, it took over the board and the name of a Chinese board game called the "astronomical game", which is recorded as existing in the 2nd century BC; the rules of the "astronomical game" are now lost. Chess eventually spread westward to Europe and eastward as far as Japan, spawning variants as it went. From India it allegedly migrated to Iran, where its terminology was translated into Persian, and its name changed to ''chatrang''. From Persia it entered the Islamic world, where the names of its pieces largely remained in their Persian forms in early Islamic times. Its name became ''shatranj'', which continued in Spanish language as ''ajedrez'' and in Greek language as ''zatrikion'', but in most of Europe was replaced by versions of the Persian word ''shāh'' = "king". There is a theory that this name replacement happened because, before the game of chess came to Europe, merchants coming to Europe brought ornamental chess kings as curios and with them their name ''shāh'', which Europeans mispronounced in various ways. *checkmate: This is the English language rendition of ''shāh māt'', which is Persian for "the king is finished" and Arabic for "the king is dead". *rook: This came via Arabic from the Persian ''rukh'', which means "chariot", but also means "cheek" (part of the face), and the mythical bird of great power called the roc. *bishop. Arabic ''al-fīl'' means "the elephant", but in Europe and the western part of the Islamic world people knew little or nothing about elephants, and the name of the chessman entered Western Europe as Latin ''alfinus'' and similar, a word with no other meaning. The English name "bishop" is a rename inspired by the conventional shape of the piece. *queen. Persian ''farzīn'' = "vizier" became Arabic ''firzān'', which entered western European languages as forms such as ''alfferza'', ''fers'', etc but was later replaced by "queen". The game spread throughout the Islam world after the Muslim conquest of Persia. Chess eventually reached Russia via Mongolia, where it was played at the beginning of the 7th century. It was introduced into Spain by the Moors in the 10th century, described in a famous manuscript covering chess, backgammon, and dice named the ''Libro de los juegos''. In some countries, pieces have changed name without changing their moves:- *In Russia and parts of modern India, the Rook is called "boat". This refers to long-distance transport along big rivers. *In parts of modern India, the Rook is called "elephant" and the Bishop is called "camel". ==Modern chess== Game_clock_">Image:Staunton chess set.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|A typical Staunton-design set and Game clock Early on, the pieces in European chess had limited movement; bishops could only move by jumping exactly two spaces diagonally, the queen could move only one space diagonally, pawns could not move two spaces on their first move, and there was no castling. By the end of the 15th century, the modern rules for the basic moves had been adopted from Italy: pawns gained the option of moving two squares on their first move and the En_passant capture therewith, bishops acquired their modern move, and the queen was made the most powerful piece; consequently modern chess is referred to as "Queen's Chess" or "Mad Queen Chess." The game in Europe since that time has been almost the same as is played today. The current rules were finalized in the early 19th century, except for the exact conditions for a draw. The most popular piece design, the "Staunton" set, was created by Nathaniel Cook in 1849, endorsed by Howard Staunton, a leading player of the time, and officially adopted by F�d�ration Internationale des �checs (FIDE) in 1924. Chess's international governing body is FIDE, which has presided over the world championship matches for decades. See World Chess Championship for details and a more in-depth history. Most countries of the world have a national chess organization as well. Although chess is not yet an Olympic sport, it has its own Chess Olympiad, held every two years as a team event. == Notation == Until the 1970s, at least in English-speaking countries, chess games were recorded and published using descriptive chess notation. This has been supplanted by the more compact algebraic chess notation. Several notations have emerged, based upon algebraic chess notation, for recording chess games in a format suitable for computer processing. Of these, Portable Game Notation (PGN) is the most common. Apart from recording games, there is also a notation Forsyth-Edwards Notation for recording specific positions. This is useful for adjourning a game to resume later or for conveying chess problem positions without a diagram. ==Computer chess== :''Main article: Computer chess'' Once solely the province of the human mind, chess is now played by both humans and machines. At first considered only a curiosity, the best computer chess like Shredder (chess) or Fritz (chess) have risen in ability to the point where they can seriously challenge and even defeat the best humans, and regularly defeat the average human International Grandmaster. Garry Kasparov, then ranked number one in the world, played a six-game match against International Business Machines's chess computer Deep Blue in February 1996. Deep Blue shocked the world by winning the first game in Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1, but Kasparov convincingly won the match by winning three games and drawing two. The six-game rematch in May 1997 was won by the machine (informally dubbed Deeper Blue) which was subsequently retired by IBM. In October 2002, Vladimir Kramnik drew in an eight-game match with the computer program Deep Fritz. In 2003, Kasparov drew both a six-game match with the computer program Deep Junior in February, and a four-game match against X3D Fritz in November. Kasparov's loss to Deep Blue has inspired the creation of chess variants in which human intelligence can still overpower computer calculation. In particular Arimaa, which is played upon a standard 8 x 8 chessboard, is a game at which humans can beat the best efforts of programmers so far, even at fast time controls. == More information == *Rules of chess *Equipment: Chessboard, Chess pieces, Game clock * Movement of the pieces: Bishop (chess), King (chess), Knight (chess), Pawn (chess), Queen (chess), Rook (chess), Castling (chess) *Sample chess game *Chess game stages: Chess opening, middlegame, endgame *Chess strategy and tactics *Tactical elements: Fork (chess), Pin (chess), Skewer (chess), Discovered attack, Zwischenzug, Undermining (chess), Overloading (chess), Interference (chess) *Middle games: Hypermodernism (chess) *Chess terminology *Chess Chess problem and Chess puzzles *Chess variant - chess with different rules, board or pieces; historical or national chess-like games. *Ways to play chess: Correspondence chess, Blitz chess, Bullet chess, Chess handicap, Chess_terminology#S, Blindfold chess, Human chess *Internet servers to play chess: Internet Chess Club, FICS, ChessWorld.net, [http://brainking.com BrainKing.com] *ELO rating system *Administrative bodies: **F�d�ration Internationale des �checs **British Chess Federation **United States Chess Federation *Chess symbols in Unicode *Chess and mathematics *Chess as mental training *Chess-related deaths *List of chess players *List of chess topics *List of national chess championships ===Famous chess games=== *Immortal game between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky (1851) *Evergreen game between Adolf Anderssen and Jean Dufresne (1852) *Opera game (chess) between Paul Morphy and two allies, the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard (1858) *Thomas_Bowdler#Chess, the first example of the famous double rook sacrifice *Lasker - Bauer, Amsterdam, 1889, the first example of the famous double bishop sacrifice *The Game of the Century between Bobby Fischer and Donald Byrne (1956) *Match of the Century between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, 1972. *Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1, the first game where a Computer chess defeated a reigning world champion using normal time controls (1996) *Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1997, Game 6, the last game of the 1997 rematch, which Deep Blue won, making it the first computer to defeat a world champion in a match over several games. *Kasparov versus The World, in which the reigning world champion played, via the Internet, against the entire rest of the world in consultation (1999) * Garry_Kasparov#Sample_game , rook sacrifice with a 15+ moves forced sacrificial combination, one of the most commented chess games ever, huge press coverage ===History of chess=== *Timeline of chess *Origins of chess **Chess in early literature **Early arabic chess literature **Cox-Forbes theory *Chess in Europe *Chess Olympiad *World records in chess ===World chess champions=== :''Main article: World Chess Championship'' Unofficial but widely recognized as Champions (pre-championship era): *Fran�ois-Andr� Danican Philidor *Howard Staunton *Adolf Anderssen *Paul Morphy Official Champions: *Wilhelm Steinitz *Emanuel Lasker *Jos� Ra�l Capablanca *Alexander Alekhine *Max Euwe *Mikhail Botvinnik *Vassily Smyslov *Mikhail Tal *Tigran Petrosian *Boris Spassky *Robert Fischer *Anatoly Karpov *Garry Kasparov Unofficial but widely accepted as current World Champion: *Vladimir Kramnik FIDE World Champions after Garry Kasparov: *Alexander Khalifman *Vishwanathan Anand *Ruslan Ponomariov *Rustam Kasimdzhanov ===Chess literature=== *Chess columns in newspapers *Chess libraries *Collections of Chess Games *Opening book ===Chess in the arts and literature=== *''Through the Looking-Glass'' *''Searching For Bobby Fischer'' *''Danse Macabre'' *''The Luzhin Defence'' *''The Royal Game'' by Stefan Zweig. *Chess and music *''Checkmate (Ballet)'', a ballet by the composer Arthur Bliss. *The Lewis chessmen also inspired Noggin the Nog. *Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone *2001: A Space Odyssey *The Eight (novel'', author: Katherine Neville (1998) *''The Flanders Panel'' by Arturo Perez-Reverte *''The Tower Struck By Lightning'' by Fernando Arrabal ===Computer chess=== * Advanced Chess * Crafty * Deep Blue * Deep Fritz * Deep Junior * GNU Chess * Hydra (chess) * Shredder (chess) * XBoard * Jogre ===Chess on Wikipedia=== * Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess * Wikipedia:Sandbox/Chess * Wikipedia:Chess championship ==External links== * [http://www.fide.com Official FIDE Website] * [http://www.fide.com/official/handbook.asp?level=EE101 Official FIDE rules] * [http://www.chessbase.com/ Chessbase News] * [http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic.html The Week In Chess] * [http://www.chessclub.com/ Largest Online chess community] * [http://www.chessgames.com/ Online chess database and community] * [http://www.chessclub.com/chessfm/ Chess.FM] - Annotated Grandmaster games and tutorials * [http://www.chessvariants.org The Chess Variants Pages] * [http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess/chess.html Chess curiosities] by Tim Krabb� * [http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/chess.htm Bill Wall's Chess Page] * [http://www.edcollins.com/chess Ed's Ever-Growing Chess Page] - essays, problems, cartoons, limericks, games, photos, puzzles, etc. * [http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex_Chess WikiTeX chess] - Supports editing chess games directly in Wiki articles. Chess bn:দাবা bs:Šah kn:ಚದುರ೦ಗ la:Scacci simple:Chess

Chess

Older discussion archived in Talk:Chess/Archive1 == Cleanup done == Cleanup done. See User:Samboy/Chess_zapped to see what information I removed from the article when cleaning it up. User:Samboy 13:33, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC) == Getting rid of POV == The user Roylee, which up until recently was using ips (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=4.241.222.101 This IP's contributions]), keeps on trying to put in his POV that Chess originated in China, not India, and that there is real evidence for this. Here are two edits where he tried inserting this POV: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chess&diff=8759917&oldid=8759884] [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chess&diff=8781872&oldid=8774238] The first time, I got rid of all of this information when I was doing a general cleanup of the article. The second time, I just [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chess&diff=0&oldid=8781872 reverted the change]. To be fair, the second edit was not nearly as strong of a POV as the first edit. That said, I feel that Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not (see item 3) and we don't need to humour non-mainstream theories about the origins of Chess on a featured article. Historians have been saying Chess came from India for a long time now; people from China have been trying to argue that it really came from China for a long time now but the evidence doesn't point that way. I'm going to put this up over at Wikipedia:Requests for comment to see if we can get some consensus. User:Samboy 13:32, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC) ::Looks like I'm not the only one who doesn't agree with Roylee. See Talk:Origins_of_chess. User:Samboy 11:22, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC) ==Clean up?== I think you were bit too keen there, Samboy - some of the removed stuff is quite interesting! Do you mind if I put a few bits back? User:Dan100 21:09, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC) ::Go ahead. I certainly hope I'm not coming off as a contentous editor who is trying to own this page! The only reason I reverted the bit about Chess' history is because I really don't think you can say that Chess started in China. User:Samboy 21:11, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC) Well I gave Shannon number it's own page using the old material, took out the line about chess's origin in the very first section (as the rest of that bit seemed purely a description of the game and I couldn't see the point in the line when it was explained in more depth later), put in a new section heading "Modern Chess" and made a link to origin of chess immeadiately before it, and popped that little part about the 'harder for computers' variation back. That bit could be an interesting bit of extra reading for those so inclined (like me!). You did a good job on the clean-up in general though, Samboy. User:Dan100 22:41, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC) ::It looks good. I actually didn't like removing the section on Arimaa, but felt I had to clean things up. So, yeah, it's nice to have that section back again. User:Samboy 02:42, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC) ==Link Removed== I removed the following link inserted by an IP:

*[http://www.chessscotland.com]- The home of Scottish Chess on the Web

Reason: I don't think we should have every single national chess club listed here. The place for this link is on the Scottish Chess Championship page, where, indeed, the link is already present. == "Chess" from the Persian word "Shah"? == Question: ''How far back in time is a word's etymology significant?'' Example: ''Yes, "chess" derives from "shah," but "shah derives from the Old Persian "khshathra", meaning "king."'' Therefore: ''Shouldn't your article say,'' "Chess (from the Old Persian word ''khshathra'')...," ''instead?'' ANSWER: ''Of course not!'' But ... Logical Points: 1. Read Etymology for more information (i.e., the example provided on that specific page for the word Go (verb)). 2. If person A says, "candy," and person B subsequently says, "cookie," and person C responds to person B's statement by finally saying, "rookie," then the etymology for "rookie" would be as follows:'' rookie: cookie,'' originally from ''candy.'' 3. In this example, the above is correct. It would be ''incorrect'' to say:'' rookie: from ''candy.'' 4. This is because person C said "rookie" only as a consequence of person B saying "cookie" and ''not'' because person A said "candy." 5. Referring to an ''authority'' on the subject: [http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=chess ''Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: chess'']. The ''correct'' etymology of "chess" is "Middle English ''ches'', from Middle French ''esches''." :I came here from the WP:RfC you made. Obviously, you can't trace the etymology back the beginning of the world! Anyway, if this helps, here's the etymology for Spanish 'jaque', being the cognate (?) for 'chess' (but the name of the game in spanish is 'ajedrez', 'jaque' is when you threaten the opposite's king and 'jaque mate' is 'chess mate'). :My dictionary says: From arabic ''š�h'' and this from persian ''š�h'' (remember this is for spanish)--User:Imaglang 18:59, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC) :For the record, the ''Oxford Companion to Chess'', in its "Etymology" entry, states that the English "chess" comes from the French "esches" and "escas". This, and virtually all other European words for the game, come from the Arabic "shah", for king. Notable exceptions are the Spanish "ajedrez" and the Portuguese "xadrez" which derive from the Arabic name for the actual game, "ash-shatranj". How all this should be represented in our article, I don't know. I just thought I'd mention it. --User:Camembert ::Then, it's easy: The etymology tracing can be: 'Chess < ''fr.'' esches/escas < ''ar.'' sh�h, and this borrowed from persian.' It's a good idea and it reamains NPOV (I'm using the filological apparatus here, the < means 'developed from'). --User:Imaglang 14:28, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC) ==Origin of chess== *I think that every possible theory should be included, or we break NPOV standards. --Ryan!">User:Merovingian | Talk">User talk:Merovingian 13:25, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC) :You're right. Then, we've got Ches v/s š�h (shah), let's discuss this and interchange ideas! --User:Imaglang 18:17, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC) **Heh - I don't think you realize how many theories there are, but every major current theory certainly. Why? There is already a specific page explaining the origins of chess. User:Dan100 21:59, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC) ==Computer Chess== : The point or fairness of comparing a human player to a computer program becomes ridiculous and merely a marketing tool for the computer manufacturer, and a source of publicity and income for the volunteer chess player. Unless the games become timed on a speed equivalent basis, they remain absurd, as the computer should either be given 1 microsecond to make its move, and the human player be given 1 day, because that is how long it takes both to calculate 100,000 positions. I'm removing the entire above paragraph as POV. Whether it's fair or ridiculous is purely POV. Also, time to calculate 100,000 positions is irrelevant, because human chess algorithms and human hardware are totally different from computer chess algorithms and computer hardware. --User:Prosfilaes 03:20, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC) : Good work. What I first took to be an innocent editorial mistake by a newcomer is now appearing to be a tasteless obsession. The responsible editor is countermanding our work in a neverending manner and spiting against our every word of constructive advice. Vigilance will be required. --User:BadSanta --User:Gunter 16:44, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC) The text has been modified as such: The computer's speed advantage and the timing of the games to never give the human equal processing time make the outcomes moot should the computer win. The highly publicised computer-human games are publicity stunts by the hardware manufacturers. BadSanta, since you are unable to point out what you think is not factual but opinion in my two sentences, let me try for you: 1. You are unaware that computers are faster than humans? 2. You are unaware that companies like IBM are using these games to promote their corporate image? Spare me your terse useless comments and inane warnings, instead tell me clearly how you cannot comprehend these two facts and why you keep removing them? They are a perfectly valid addition to the article, they are factual. Wikipedia is a community, this Chess article is not your baby. :Stop fighting! Is there any reason to delete that text? I don't see any POV, but only facts (maybe I'm wrong). Stay cool and don't let this go into an edit war. --User:Imaglang 17:23, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::The proper scope of this article is not be to engage in speculation about the motives of corporate hardware manufacturers to host computer-human contests. Furthermore, an accusation against them for purely engaging in "publicity stunts" instead of "advancing AI" is inappropriate. ::Your assessment of the advantages computers have against human opponents is not altogether factless yet your conclusions are imbalanced to the extreme and incomplete as you totally ignore the compensating advantages top, well-trained human players have against computers. [In my studied opinion, this article is definitely not the proper place for a thorough explanation of such difficult-to-define, psychological and human learning details, however.] ::How do you reconcile the facts that Kramnik fought Deep Fritz to a draw in 2003 and Kasparov fought Deep Junior and X3D Fritz to draws in 2004 with your assessment? Your original write-up was so salacious, one must have drawn the conclusion that it is impossible for ANY human to compete against top chess supercomputers and programs yet the best human players at their best ... still do. ::Please read, think and learn a lot more about what you seek to write with authority. --User:BadSanta :::You're right: Kramnik (I saw that live through Internet. What a match!) and Kasparov did it, but not anyone can. These are super-trained and professional chess players and I can assure you that I could never beat such a machine. Obviously, this fact shows that there's no place for the word 'impossible', maybe 'very difficult'. About publicity, we agree, that can't be in the article. --User:Imaglang 18:14, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC) --User:Gunter 18:53, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)It is not speculation as to why e.g. IBM made Deep Blue, to promote IBM hardware, but ignorance on your part to think they did it for some greater glory of furthering AI (which they did not). IBM saw a marketing opportunity and took it, that is what they do. The matches are speed biased. The computer program failing to win only shows the inadequacies of the programmers ability. If both computer and human used the exact same logic for playing, the computer would always win, due to it's speed. So as i pointed out, unless the computer is limited to the same number of moves it can calculate as the human, what are you proving? The obvious, that computers are faster than humans? Since the current section on Computer Chess implies some amazing feat in computers beating humans at chess, i would like this balanced to give a more realistic view of this. :Now I understand your point about publicity. But, i don't think it should be placed here. Perhaps the IBM article is a better place. This is about chess and not about publicity in chess. The point to discuss here is if we should include the speed fact (I would). --User:Imaglang 19:01, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC) :If computers and humans used the exact same logic for playing, it would depend on the logic. If humans tried to play chess the way a computer does, the human would get squashed. But you seriously underestimate the power of the wetware the human has; just because it doesn't multiply fast, doesn't mean it's not powerful. Humans do pattern-matching stunts that computers can't even come close to, and given the amount of neural matter devoted to those problems, it's like humans are much, much faster than computers at those problems. A human can look at a board and see whether it's a good situation or not without really looking at any future moves, and defintely without doing an exhaustive multiply search, where a computer would be forced to check out the decision tree to make the same judgement. If a computer tried to play chess the way a human does, it couldn't beat the elementary school chess champ. Human wetware and computer hardware are in no ways isomorphic, and comparisons that claim that they are are unrealistic. :IBM is a publically owned corporation; its sole ultimate goal is money. While the researchers who worked on the machine understood that it was a publicity stunt, it was also an important study as to where computers stood against the best in the world. --User:Prosfilaes 22:19, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::My thoughts exactly. User:Dan100 22:05, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC) == Vote == I see that we have a revert war going on over whether the following paragraph should be included in the Computer Chess section of this article:

The computer's speed advantage and the timing of the games to never give the human equal processing time make the outcomes moot should the computer win. The highly publicised computer-human games are publicity stunts by the hardware manufacturers.

The vote is this: Should the above paragraph be included in the article. The four possible answers are: Yes, No, Abstain, and Other (it should be included, but in a different form). So, let the voting begin. Yes No # Far too much POV User:Samboy 23:47, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC) # Not encyclopaedic, though I don't see POV. --User:Imaglang 00:19, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC) # Poorly-balanced facts admixed with emotional, extreme opinions. -- User:BadSanta #*--User:Gunter 12:35, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)poorly balanced? i'm trying to balance the article that is already there with it's biased opinion. You keep raving about opinion, are you sure you know the difference between fact and opinion? # Some reference to processing speed is valid, but this is not well presented -- and the use of "moot" is just silly. Perhaps, after the current first paragraph of the "Computer chess" section, and as a lead-in to the recounting of recent matches, we could add something like: "In the 1940s [or was it the 1950s?], Mikhail Botvinnik suggested that a computer capable of playing at grandmaster level would have to be as large as the University of Moscow. The performance of the best chess-playing computers has improved as the programming has become more sophisticated (with the aid of some human grandmasters, such as ____ [I think Joel Benjamin has been a consultant]), and as more powerful mainframes have increased the number of computations that can be performed in a given time." As for the question of corporate motives, I think the price of IBM stock went up after Kasparov's loss; if so, that could mentioned as an interesting sidelight to the reference to that match. User:JamesMLane 02:56, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC) #* --User:Gunter 12:35, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)That should be a yes or other vote since you agree with both my points. #**No, I don't agree with your wholesale disparagement of the meaningfulness of the human-versus-computer matches, and I don't agree with including unattributed speculation about corporate motives. It would be better to have nothing than to have the paragraph we were asked to vote on. My suggested language is an attempt to bridge the gap, by including facts (grandmaster involvement in programming, IBM stock price movement) and properly attributed opinions (Botvinnik's). I was trying to address the subjects you raised but to do so in an encylopedic manner. Does my suggested language seem OK to you (subject to confirming facts and filling in gaps)? It would be better if we could work out consensus language than to just decide something by a vote in the poll. User:JamesMLane 19:11, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC) #No, because it's entirely possible that the human has more processing power. To the extent that we don't know the results of any given contest, it's not moot. Is there any point in just saying the contests are for publicity purposes? Pretty much everything of the sort is, to some extent or another. --User:Prosfilaes 06:51, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC) #For all of the reasons above. User:Dan100 22:19, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC) #Human "processing power" is ''such'' a vague quantity; I expect we'll have to make significant advances in cognitive science before we can even begin to make a meaningful comparison. Until then, any estimate of human brain-time spent attacking a problem is a Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed. As long as we're trying to reference other people's opinions, I should note that Raymond Kurzweil's ''The Age of Spiritual Machines'' advocates the position that, empirically speaking, chess tournaments demonstrate that machines are already doing things which we once thought only humans could do. In other words, he accepts the validity of the demonstration, regardless of IBM's motives. Furthermore, as added trivia, in Bruce Pandolfini's "blow-by-blow" account of the tournament, he quips at the last move, "The Black King looks pale. It's time to buy IBM stock." —User:Anville 00:46, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC) Abstain # What exactly would one put in here? If I intend to abstain, surely I don't have an opinion to add. Other # I would like it added (obviously), but reworded so as to conform to Wikipedia's standards.--User:Gunter 00:24, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC) Note- Now our dear boy is arguing with the votes he doesn't like. *I have no problem with that, as long as it doesn't mess up the tally, so I've reformatted. Also, I suggest that everyone refrain from comments like "our dear boy". Let's stick to the issues. User:JamesMLane 19:11, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC) == Arimaa == The article as it now stands implies that there are several chess variants which computers play poorly relative to humans. I know of none other than Arimaa. Can anyone name a few, and give evidence for their intractability to comptuers? The $10,000 prize money for Arimaa insures that real programmers are actually trying and failing, which probably isn't the case for other variants, but I'm curious about even minimal evidence to the effect that new variants are being spawned in which human intelligence dominates. Thanks. --User:Fritzlein 01:55, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC) :There are at least a few AI experts here as editors who may have furthergoing valuable, detailed input than I. However, I can tell you that the unrivalled intractability and theoretical depth of Arimaa is attributable mainly to its turn-order based upon each player having 4 moves per turn. :The vast majority of chess variants, likewise to standard FIDE chess, allow only 1 move per turn per player. Nonetheless, a small minority of chess variants (such as the well-known Marseillais Chess as well as the games in the Symmetrical Chess Collection) allow 2 moves per turn per player. There are probably a few others somewhere in the large literature of over 1000 chess variants. Perhaps, there is even another game(s) where 3 or 4 moves per turn per player are allowed. As a general rule, the theoretical depth at 1 move per turn is exponential time complete, at 2 moves per turn is hyper-exponential time complete, etc. :--User:BadSanta : I've played with writing a DragonChess game on my own time. It's a 3d variant of chess with 84 pieces and 288 squares. I may not count as a "real" programmer, and I would not be entirely surprised if there were some fatal weaknesses that showed up after greater processing, but it seems a lot more complex for the computer. Moving the number of moves at the start from 10 to over a hundred seems to make it a lot harder for the computer to process. : All of which is unsubstantiated, original research. YMMV. --User:Prosfilaes 07:41, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC) : I think in Xiangqi and Shogi the best human player is still better then the best computer program, due to higher game-tree complexity. However it is predicted that by year 2010 this will change, see [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=512155 Computer Shogi]. Other chess variants, which can be difficult for computers are Dark Chess or Kriegspiel, as they are games with incomplete information and require more startegical planning and some psychological reasoning then deep move searching. User:Andreas Kaufmann 07:47, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC) Thanks for the other examples. It's hard for me to judge how unique Arimaa is. Is a sufficiently large game-tree complexity all that is necessary for humans to excel relative to computers? Intuitively not. As a gamer I expect that a game must also contain strategic themes that the human mind can grasp. For example, if pawns in chess could move backwards, I expect that it would increase game-tree complexity, but also make computers even more dominant over humans, since it would remove a strategic point from the game. And isn't the endgame, with its reduced game-tree complexity, exactly the area of chess where humans are still unambiguously better that computers? My hunch is that Arimaa simply a brilliantly-designed game. I could probably make a new game tomorrow with ten times the game-tree complexity of Arimaa, yet have it be hideously intractible to humans relative to computers. It isn't clear to me that human intelligence is such that a large playing field is all that is necessary to excel. --User:Fritzlein 14:48, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) : The endgame of Chess is one of the few completely analyzed parts of Chess. At one time, it was thought that 50 moves without capture would never change the fate of a well-played game; computers proved that there are certain endgames (K+R versus K, IIRC) that can won if there was no such limit. If there are five or fewer pieces on the board, then a computer can play perfect Chess, using Ken Thompson's tables. King, rook and bishop beats a king and two knights in 223 moves by computer analysis. ([http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/12.58.html First article in the Risks digest]) : You reduce the game-tree complexity enough, and computers can quickly become unbeatable. There used to be a paper on the web by the solver of Connect-4 listing the major games and how computers were doing on them. If you sorted them by game-tree complexity, nothing with a higher game-tree complexity than Chess had a contender for the world title, and everything with a lower game-tree complexity had computers the permeanant holder of the World Master. : It's true that upping the game-tree complexity generally makes it more intractable to humans. But in general, humans work by pattern-matching, which isn't as vulnerable to those increases. An increase in game-tree complexity directly ups the difficulty for computers. I don't think Arimaa is all that brilliantly designed or unique in this manner. --User:Prosfilaes 01:24, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC) I am willing to assert more thoroughgoing that Arimaa is, in fact, a badly-designed game- a game designed with the single-minded purpose of being intractable for computer players at the sacrifice of many other known, quality game-design criteria (with the notable exception of human playability). The inventor of this game is unknown to the chess variant community except for this one entry and as such, has demonstrated no general mastery of quality gameworks. The $10,000 prize (if the money really exists) will never have to be awarded, of course, because it is generally recognized by AI experts that orders of magnitude of increase in CPU technology are required before a computer can possibly play this game competently, much less incisively enough to beat a human expert. As such, the $10,000 reward is little more than just a "publicity stunt" for the purpose of drawing attention to and popularizing this game (which has been remarkably successful). The first-move-of-the-game advantage (for white) is generally the greatest enemy to stability in chess variants as a class of board games. For instance, in standard FIDE chess, appr. 55%-60% of the games which do not end in draws end in victories for white. This is with a turn-order based upon each player having 1 move per turn. Now, as an existential theorem, imagine how much more unstable a game must be in which each player has 4 moves per turn. Perhaps, catastrophically. This is true regardless of the fact that a game winning opening book for white has not yet been discovered due to the intractable nature of the game to present-day computers. If such a thing CAN exist in theory, then the game is fatally flawed. --User:BadSanta == Request for references == Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles Wikipedia:Cite sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check has more information. Thank you, and please [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Taxman&action=edit§ion=new leave me a message] when a few references have been added to the article. - User:Taxman 18:54, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC) == What do we mean by CHESS? == ''Chess'' in this article seems to be defined uniquely in the header as the ''modern'', ''european'' chess (64 squares, 8 pawns, 2 rooks etc...). Wouldn't it be more appropriate to define first chess in a general way since many variants of chess have different rules and configurations? I would define ''chess'' as a strategic bord game where two armies are confronted and the goal is to take the King of the enemy. Then, it can be explained that the word ''chess'' taken alone is mostly used to denote the european, modern game, and if one wants to denote a variant, one says ''chenese chess'', ''nordic chess'', ''thai chess'' etc. --User:Philipum 11:52, 26 May 2005 (UTC) :OK, now I understood when I clicked the link Chess (disambiguation). But why not explain that directly in the article itself instead of forcing people to find this link? --User:Philipum 12:00, 26 May 2005 (UTC) ==Suggestion== I think it would be nice to have a weekly(or longer) chess collaboration to expand bio's, openings, books and other chess related things. Thoughts?User:Falphin 19:26, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC) ==Rukh== From what I understand, ''rukh'' is actually Persian for "chariot". It only happens to sound like the Arabic for roc.[http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/rook.html] User:Gwalla — User:Gwalla | User talk:Gwalla 00:35, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Age range? == Where 2 that age range come from ? Didn't Capablanca learn the game when he was four ? Also the playing time > 1 hour ? There are very fast games, and also games that last months. I Think thoses two parameters really make no sense in chess. : Capablanca is something of an exception. Age ranges can't be precise; they're best estimates. Again, the playing time is the norm. You can play any game by email and take forever, but most games of chess will run up to that time. --User:Prosfilaes 21:20, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Chess

Articles, sub-categories, and images relating to the game of Chess. Chaturanga game family Mental-skill games Board games

Chess

== Categorys == I re-added the categorys Board games and Mental-skill games for several reasons: *It seems that adding them to a category that is a member of these category's does not get them added to the pages. It seems to me that this should happen and perhaps its a bug. I have had trouble with articles needing to be re-saved for this to happen before but the Categorys do belong. *According to the origins of chess page placing this category in Chaturanga game family is questionable, and doign so exclusivly is wrong. From that article: :''While it is generally thought that chess originated from the Indian game Chaturanga from around 1400 years ago, the evidence for this theory has long been recognized as weak, primarily because no physical evidence of the ancient Indian game to date has been excavated. However textual and circumstancial evidence currently favour India over other sources. Other possible sources listed in the article are: China, India, Egypt, Greece, Assyria, Persia, Arabia, Ireland and Uzbekistan. User:Dalf | User talk:Dalf 00:24, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC) :See Talk:Origins of chess on the many problems with that article. The only real controversy is whether Chaturanga existed and was the original game, or whether all chesslike games derived ultimately from shatranj. I believe the Chaturanga origin is currently the most commonly accepted theory. The other proposed origins are not seriously considered by historians. I started the Chaturanga game family category to replace the previous chess-rooted hierarchy (where related games, and even precursors, were stuck in "chess variants", under the Chess category), which seemed both inaccurate and unfair. :Since all games in the family (and virtually no-one seriously suggests that they are unrelated) are mental-skill board games, putting chess directly in those categories is redundant. Therefore, your criticism seems more applicable to the ''naming'' of the family category, not the direct inclusion of this category in those others. User:Gwalla — User:Gwalla | User talk:Gwalla 03:07, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::Weather or not the history is in question or not is really secondary to why I made the change. Even if you are right and chess belongs in this new catagory, and even if this new catagory is in the category for board games. When someon who has never heard of Chaturanga looks at the board games catagory trying to find chess (or the Mental-skill games catagory) and they do not find chess that is problematic. Look at the article for Go (board game), it is also in several categories as well as sub-categories in the same hierarchy. I do not know if there is offical wikipedia polocy about catagory inheratence though it seems to me that you should be able to say "add this category and any further up the tree X levels", but since (it seems) that you can't I think the right answer is to include them all on the article. Otherwise you end up with the bizzar situation where looking at Category:Board_games chess is mentioned in an example of the opening paragraph but then cannot be found in the list. User:Dalf | User talk:Dalf 03:50, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC) :::Ah, I see what you're saying. Yes, that's a limitation of the existing category system. There is no official policy for this as yet, AFAIK, but including an article into a category and a subcategory of that category is ''generally'' avoided. Hopefully the developers will create a way to view categories in "flat mode", showing all articles in subcategories as well as those directly included, which would make the point moot. User:Gwalla — User:Gwalla | User talk:Gwalla 06:44, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::::Yes I agree, infact I THOUGH it was that way and spent a good 20 minutes making sure there was not some sort of bug. After establishing that there is no sort of category inhertance and that you ahve to list them all, I looked around and found that the category and sub-category listing in the same article is use a bit. For example the article on Missouri is listed in Category:Missouri as well as Category:U.S. States even though Category:Missouri is also listed thus. I imagine this is as we say in the software industry "a feature not a bug", since if they inherited by default you might end up with some pretty strange listings at the bottom of some articles. Though I think a limited inhertance system (one, two, or a configurable number of levels) would be workable. Perhaps I will poke around on the MediaWIki and Meta sites and see, I am sure this topic is/has been discussed somewehre. User:Dalf | User talk:Dalf 07:58, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Chess

There are two main pages related to chess in the Wikipedia namespace. These are: *Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess, the Wikipedia:WikiProject on chess articles *Wikipedia:Chess championship, a Wikifun chess competition involving Wikipedia contributors

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C