Chess Games

Chess on Yahoo! Games Chess on Yahoo! Games is a popular aspect of Yahoo! Games. It allows users to play rated or unrated chess, including tournaments, leagues, and ladders. Yahoo! Games can be accessed for chess using a Java enabled browser. Efforts to emulate chess servers are in development through YICS, wherein Yahoo! Games may be accessed through a standard FICS-style chess client.[1] Yahoo! Games is currently one of the large online sites where chess players meet, but has been criticized for its rating and computer abuse, spammers, failure to implement the Portable Game Notation standard, and awkward structure.[2] Chess on Yahoo! Games lacks many of the features of standard chess servers Chess variant A chess variant is a game derived from, related to or similar to chess in at least one respect.[1] The difference from chess can include one or more of the following: Different board (larger or smaller, non-square board shape overall or different spaces used within the board such as triangles or hexagons instead of squares). Fairy pieces different from those used within chess. Different rules for capture, move order, game goal, etc. National chess variants which are older than Western chess, such as chaturanga, shatranj, xiangqi, and shogi, are traditionally also called chess variants in the Western world. They have some similarities to chess and share a common ancestor game. The number of possible chess variants is unlimited. D.B. Pritchard, the author of Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, estimates that there are over 2000 chess variants,[2] confining the number to published ones. In 1998 Zillions of Games software program was created. It enables non-programmers to design and playtest most types of chess variants using an AI opponent. As a result a large number of chess variants were implemented for Zillions of Games.[3] In the context of chess problems, chess variants are called fantasy chess, heterodox chess or fairy chess. Some chess variants are used only in chess composition and not for playing. The Game of the Century (chess) The Game of the Century usually refers to a chess game played between Donald Byrne and 13-year old Bobby Fischer in the Rosenwald Memorial Tournament in New York City on October 17, 1956. It was nicknamed "The Game of the Century" by Hans Kmoch in Chess Review. (Others, such as Larry Evans,[1], have offered different games as candidates for this description, such as the game between Garry Kasparov and Veselin Topalov at the Wijk aan Zee Corus tournament in 1999.)[2] The term "Game of the Century" is a bit hyperbolic. Byrne's play (11.Bg5?; 18.Bxb6?) was weak; had a strong grandmaster rather than a 13-year-old played Black, it would still be an outstanding game, but probably not the Game of the Century. Many players consider the game inferior to later games of Fischer's, such as his stunning win over Donald's brother Robert at the 1963 U.S. Championship.[3] Donald Byrne (1930–1976) was one of the leading American chess masters at the time of this game. He had won the 1953 U.S. Open Championship, and would later represent the United States in the 1962, 1964, and 1968 Olympiads. He became an International Master in 1962, and would likely have risen further if not for ill health. Robert "Bobby" Fischer (b. 1943) was at this time a promising young master. Following this game, he had a meteoric rise, winning the 1957 U.S. Open on tiebreaks, winning the 1957-58 U.S. (Closed) Championship (and all seven later championships he played in), qualifying for the Candidates Tournament and becoming the world's youngest grandmaster at age 15 1/2 in 1958. He won the world championship in 1972, and is considered one of the greatest chessplayers in history. In this game, Fischer (playing Black) demonstrates brilliance, innovation, improvisation and poetry. Byrne (playing white), after a standard opening, makes a minor mistake on move 11, moving the same piece twice (wasting time). Fischer pounces, with brilliant sacrificial play, culminating in an incredible queen sacrifice on move 17. Byrne captures the queen, but Fischer gets far too much material for it -- a rook, two bishops, and a pawn. At the end, Fischer's pieces coordinate to force checkmate, while Byrne's queen sits, helpless, at the other end of the board. Chess book author Graham Burgess suggests three lessons to be learned from this game, which can be summarized as follows: In general, don't waste time by moving the same piece twice in an opening; get your other pieces developed first. Material sacrifices are likely to be effective if your opponent's king is still in the middle and a central file is open. Even at 13, Fischer was a player to be reckoned with. A Game at Chess A Game at Chess is a comic satirical play by Thomas Middleton, first staged in August 1624 by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre, and notable for its political content. The play seems to be about a chess match, and even contains a genuine chess opening: the Queen's Gambit Declined. Instead of personal names, the characters are known as the White Knight, the Black King, etc. However, audiences immediately recognized the play as an allegory for the stormy relationship between Spain (the black pieces) and Great Britain (the white pieces). King James I of England is the White King; King Philip IV of Spain is the Black King. In particular, the play dramatizes the struggle of negotiations over the proposed marriage of the then Prince Charles with the Spanish princess, the Infanta Maria. It focuses on the journey by Prince Charles (the "White Knight") and George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (the "White Duke", or rook) to Madrid in 1623. Among the secondary targets of the satire was the former Archbishop of Split, Markantun de Dominis, who was caricatured as the Fat Bishop (played by William Rowley). De Dominis was a famous turncoat of his day: he had left the Roman Catholic Church to join the Anglican Church—and then returned to Rome again. The traitorous White King's Pawn is a composite of several figures, including Lionel Cranfield, the Earl of Middlesex, a former Lord Treasurer who was impeached before the House of Lords in April 1624. The former Spanish ambassador to London, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, conde de Gondomar, was blatantly satirized and caricatured in the play as the Machiavellian Black Knight. (The King's Men went so far as to buy discarded items of Gondomar's wardrobe for the role.)[1] His successor recognized the satire and complained to King James. His description of the crowd's reaction to the play yields a vivid picture of the scene: There was such merriment, hubbub and applause that even if I had been many leagues away it would not have been possible for me not to have taken notice of it.[2] The play was stopped after nine performances (August 6-16, Sundays omitted), but not before it had become "the greatest box-office hit of early modern London" [1]. The Privy Council opened a prosecution against the actors and the author of the play on Aug. 18 (it was then illegal to portray any modern Christian king on the stage). The Globe Theatre was shut down by the prosecution, though Middleton was able to acquit himself by showing that the play had been passed by the Master of the Revels, Sir Henry Herbert. Nevertheless, further performance of the play was forbidden and Middleton and the actors were reprimanded and fined. Middleton never wrote another play. An obvious question arises: if the play was clearly offensive, why did the Master of the Revels license it on July 12 of that summer? Herbert may have been acting in collusion with the "war party" of the day, which included figures as prominent as Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham; they were eager for a war with Spain and happy to see public ire roused against the Spanish. If this is true, Middleton and the King's Men were themselves pawns in a geopolitical game of chess. A Game at Chess is unique in that it exists in more 17th-century manuscripts than printed texts (only three of which survive). Of the six extant manuscripts, one is an authorial holograph, and two are the work of Ralph Crane, a professional scribe who worked for the King's Men in this era and who is thought to have prepared some of the play texts for the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays