Find the word definition

Crossword clues for chess

chess
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
chess
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
tennis/chess/badminton etc tournament
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
good
▪ The art of writing a good chess program is thinking of efficient short cuts through the search-space.
▪ A good chess player can be a bad contestant, but all three Polgar sisters are superb contestants.
▪ Like a really good sacrifice at chess.
▪ The internet could play that role, because it helps to reveal the best side of chess.
▪ The machines do not play good chess: in fact they play terrible chess.
■ NOUN
board
▪ It is the sub-plot that succeeds: wheelchair-bound Sir Clifford at home with his chess board and pushy housekeeper Mrs Bolton.
▪ Richard Chang slides an electronic pawn across the chess board on his computer screen.
▪ If you wanted to describe the position of the pieces on a chess board you could use a 2 dimensional array.
▪ But the relationship between computers and chess goes far deeper than the contest for supremacy on the chess board itself.
▪ Such an array would only represent the chess board at one moment of play.
▪ Like a chess board, he said.
▪ Magritte with chess board and painted bottle, photographed by Charles Leirens, 1960.
▪ From there, he told us, he would imagine the entire chess board laid across the land.
champion
▪ Tracey Thompson agrees there aren't many schools, especially girls schools which can boast two national chess champions.
game
▪ They watch the adventurers with curiosity, but continue their chess game.
▪ The continuing development of multimedia computers suggests that video lessons and video teleconferencing of chess games may not be far off.
▪ This chess game works on all graphics boards and the pieces are drawn well soas to avoid straining the eye.
▪ The chess game reaches a very different stalemate in the case of the albatross.
▪ Management of welfare thus follows the course of a large chess game.
▪ Conrad used the back of his hand to knock the half-played chess game off the low glass table.
▪ We can have an infinite chess game which will go on for months.
▪ More like a move in a chess game.
match
▪ Mr Malik and he had visited Cranborne in order to organize a chess match between the two schools.
▪ Garry Kasparov won his chess match with the Deep Blue supercomputer.
piece
▪ Somewhere, hands were moving chess pieces across a board.
▪ He moves us around like a bunch of chess pieces.
player
▪ This winning streak caught a lot of chess players by surprise.
▪ Such games are studied by chess players to improve their own techniques.
▪ Most chess players would have thought this was inadequate to play Master-level chess even for a machine with superior positional understanding.
▪ San Francisco cops are clamping down on a new brand of outlaws: sidewalk-hogging chess players.
▪ Perhaps the most important characteristic of an expert chess player, however, is flexibility when uncertainty arises.
▪ A certain bench in the park, near the chess players, ordinary things, not unusual in any way.
▪ A good chess player can be a bad contestant, but all three Polgar sisters are superb contestants.
▪ It's partly the fault of chess players and match organisers, who did not wholeheartedly support the idea.
set
▪ The latest one was a chess set, a perfect board and all the pieces individually moulded from sugar paste.
▪ George Bush got a Desert Storm chess set.
▪ She recognized his intricate paperweight on the desk, his books, the old chess set, the orderly arrangement of things.
tournament
▪ Both sides were scrupulously polite, as if participating in a chess tournament.
▪ Choirs, plays, gymnastics, book discussions, chess tournaments, lectures and crafts classes took place constantly.
world
▪ Last month the world chess federation Fide accepted a £1.2 million bid from Manchester to stage the championship.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Choirs, plays, gymnastics, book discussions, chess tournaments, lectures and crafts classes took place constantly.
▪ Like chess, as you say.
▪ San Francisco cops are clamping down on a new brand of outlaws: sidewalk-hogging chess players.
▪ She had that stone chess table made too and put inside.
▪ The only apparent relief from chess were two dolls and a golliwog on Judit's bunk bed.
▪ Two huge screens above the chess boards carried illuminated chess graphics to display the games.
▪ Until recently, only the most elite of chess wizards remained beyond the reach of computer chess programs.
▪ When I got tired of watching the bow or reading or playing chess, I would often watch Morris at work.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
chess

Cheat \Cheat\, n. [rob. an abbrevation of escheat, lands or tenements that fall to a lord or to the state by forfeiture, or by the death of the tenant without heirs; the meaning being explained by the frauds, real or supposed, that were resorted to in procuring escheats. See Escheat.]

  1. An act of deception or fraud; that which is the means of fraud or deception; a fraud; a trick; imposition; imposture.

    When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat.
    --Dryden.

  2. One who cheats or deceives; an impostor; a deceiver; a cheater.

    Airy wonders, which cheats interpret.
    --Johnson

  3. (Bot.) A troublesome grass, growing as a weed in grain fields; -- called also chess. See Chess.

  4. (Law) The obtaining of property from another by an intentional active distortion of the truth.

    Note: When cheats are effected by deceitful or illegal symbols or tokens which may affect the public at large and against which common prudence could not have guarded, they are indictable at common law.
    --Wharton.

    Syn: Deception; imposture; fraud; delusion; artifice; trick; swindle; deceit; guile; finesse; stratagem.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
chess

13c., from Old French esches "chessmen," plural of eschec "game of chess, chessboard; checkmate" (see check (n.)), from the key move of the game. Modern French still distinguishes échec "check, blow, rebuff, defeat," from plural échecs "chess."\n

\nThe original word for "chess" is Sanskrit chaturanga "four members of an army" -- elephants, horses, chariots, foot soldiers. This is preserved in Spanish ajedrez, from Arabic (al) shat-ranj, from Persian chatrang, from the Sanskrit word.The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chessboard, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem. [Marcel Duchamp, address to New York State Chess Association, Aug. 30, 1952]

Wiktionary
chess

Etymology 1 n. A board game for two players with each beginning with sixteen chess pieces moving according to fixed rules across a chessboard with the objective to checkmate the opposing king. Etymology 2

n. (context now chiefly US English) A type of grass, generally considered a weed. Etymology 3

n. (context military chiefly in the plural English) One of the platforms, consisting of two or more planks dowelled together, for the flooring of a temporary military bridge.

WordNet
chess
  1. n. weedy annual native to Europe but widely distributed as a weed especially in wheat [syn: cheat, Bromus secalinus]

  2. a game for two players who move their 16 pieces according to specific rules; the object is to checkmate the opponent's king [syn: chess game]

Wikipedia
Chess (musical)

Chess is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, formerly of ABBA, and with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story involves a politically driven, Cold War-era chess tournament between two men—an American grandmaster and a Soviet grandmaster—and their fight over a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other. Although the protagonists were not intended to represent any real individuals, the character of the American grandmaster (named Freddie Trumper in the stage version) was loosely based on Bobby Fischer, while elements of the story may have been inspired by the chess careers of Russian grandmasters Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov.

Like several other productions, namely Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, a highly successful concept album was released prior to the first theatrical production in order to raise money. In the case of Chess, the concept album was released in the fall of 1984 while the show opened in London's West End in 1986 where it played for three years. A much-altered U.S. version premiered on Broadway in 1988, but survived only for two months. Chess is frequently revised for new productions, many of which try to merge elements from both the British and American versions, but no major revival production of the musical has yet been attempted either in the West End or on Broadway.

Chess placed seventh in a BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the U.K.'s "Number One Essential Musicals."

Chess (disambiguation)

Chess is a two-player board game.

Chess or CHESS may also refer to:

Chess (2006 film)

Chess is a 2006 Malayalam action thriller film directed by Raj Babu. Dileep plays the male protagonist and Bhavana is his heroine. The film also stars Ashish Vidyarthi, Jagathy Sreekumar, Harisree Ashokan and Vijayaraghavan and Rajyalakshmi.The film was a hit at the box office.

The movie was dubbed into Hindi as Aag Ka Dariya

Chess (surname)

Chess is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

  • Jamar Chess, American music manager
  • Lisa Chess, American actress
  • Marshall Chess (born 1942), American record producer
  • Phil Chess (born 1921), American record producer
  • Richard Chess (poet) (born 1953), American poet
  • Richard B. Chess, American politician
  • Stanley Chess, American legal commentator
Chess

Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. Chess is played by millions of people worldwide, both amateurs and professionals.

Each player begins the game with 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. Each of the six piece types moves differently. The most powerful piece is the queen and the least powerful piece is the pawn. The objective is to ' checkmate' the opponent's king by placing it under an inescapable threat of capture. To this end, a player's pieces are used to attack and capture the opponent's pieces, while supporting their own. In addition to checkmate, the game can be won by voluntary resignation by the opponent, which typically occurs when too much material is lost, or if checkmate appears unavoidable. A game may also result in a draw in several ways.

Chess is believed to have originated in India, some time before the 7th century, being derived from the Indian game of chaturanga. Chaturanga is also the likely ancestor of the Eastern strategy games xiangqi, janggi and shogi. The pieces took on their current powers in Spain in the late 15th century; the rules were finally standardized in the 19th century. The first generally recognized World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886. Since 1948, the World Championship has been controlled by FIDE, the game's international governing body; the current World Champion is the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen. FIDE also organizes the Women's World Championship, the World Junior Championship, the World Senior Championship, the Blitz and Rapid World Championships and the Chess Olympiad, a popular competition among teams from different nations. There is also a Correspondence Chess World Championship and a World Computer Chess Championship. Online chess has opened amateur and professional competition to a wide and varied group of players. There are also many chess variants, with different rules, different pieces, and different boards.

FIDE awards titles to skilled players, the highest of which is grandmaster. Many national chess organizations also have a title system. However, these are not recognised by FIDE. The term "master" may refer to a formal title or may be used more loosely for any skilled player.

Chess is a recognized sport of the International Olympic Committee; some national sporting bodies such as the Spanish Consejo Superior de Deportes also recognize chess as a sport. Chess was included in the 2006 and 2010 Asian Games.

Since the second half of the 20th century, computers have been programmed to play chess with increasing success, to the point where the strongest home computers play chess at a higher level than the best human players. Since the 1990s, computer analysis has contributed significantly to chess theory, particularly in the endgame. The computer IBM Deep Blue was the first machine to overcome a reigning World Chess Champion in a match when it defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997. The rise of strong computer programs (known as "engines") that can be run on hand-held devices has led to increasing concerns about cheating during tournaments.

Chess (poem)

Chess is a poem written by Jan Kochanowski, first published in 1564 or 1565. Inspired by Marco Girolamo Vida's Scacchia Ludus, it is a narrative poetry work that describes a game of chess between two men, Fiedor and Borzuj, who fight for the right to marry Anna, princess of Denmark. The poem anthropomorphises the pieces, presenting the game as a battle between two armies, in a style reminiscent of battle scenes in the works of Homer and Virgil.

In 1912, Alexander Wagner reconstructed the game described in the poem, while Yuri Averbakh found that it has three possible endings in 1967.

Chess (Northwestern University)

Chess was a pioneering chess program from the 1970s, written by Larry Atkin and David Slate at Northwestern University. Chess ran on Control Data Corporation's line of supercomputers. Work on the program began in 1968. It dominated the first computer chess tournaments, such as the World Computer Chess Championship and ACM's North American Computer Chess Championship. Chess was the first published use of the bitboard data structure applied to the game of chess.

In 1976, Chess 4.5 won the Class B section of the Paul Masson American Chess Championship, the first time a computer was successful in a human tournament. The performance rating was 1950.

In February 1977 Chess 4.6, the only computer entry, surprised observers by winning the 84th Minnesota Open against competitors just under Master level. It achieved a USCF rating close to or at Expert, higher than previous programs' Class C or D, by winning five games and losing none. Stenberg (rated 1969) became the second Class A player to lose to a computer in a tournament game, the first being Jola.

Because of its Minnesota victory, grandmaster Walter Browne invited Chess 4.6 on a CDC Cyber 176 to his simultaneous chess exhibition; to Browne and others' surprise, Chess 4.6 defeated the United States chess champion. Also in 1977, Chess 4.6 won the second World Computer Chess Championship in Toronto, ahead of 15 other programs including KAISSA; Chess 4 had finished in second place to KAISSA at the first tournament in 1974. The favorite to win the tournament, like all but one other entry Chess 4.6 ran on a computer located away from the tournament; despite losing 90 minutes to hardware failure at the start of its first match the program rapidly defeated its opponent in 27 moves, earlier than any other first-round match. Chess 4.6 was capable of defeating 99.5% of United States Chess Federation-rated players under tournament conditions, and was stronger in blitz chess.

In 1978 and 1979 Atkin and Peter W. Frey published in BYTE a series on computer chess programming, including the Pascal source for Chess 0.5, a chess engine suitable for microcomputers. That year the improved Chess 4.7—which had by now achieved a 2030 rating after 31 tournament games—played against David Levy who, in 1968 had wagered that he would not be beaten by a computer within ten years. Whereas Chess 4.7 had beaten Levy under blitz conditions, the bet involved forty moves over a two-hour period, the computer's choices being relayed by telephone from Minnesota to the board. Levy won the bet, defeating the Chess 4.7 in a six-game match by a score of 4.5-1.5, The computer scored a draw in game two after getting a completely winning position but being outplayed by Levy in the endgame, and a win in game four—the first computer victory against a human master—when Levy essayed the very sharp, dubious Latvian Gambit. Levy wrote, "I had proved that my 1968 assessment had been correct, but on the other hand my opponent in this match was very, very much stronger than I had thought possible when I started the bet." He observed that, "Now nothing would surprise me (very much)." International Master Edward Lasker stated in 1978, "My contention that computers cannot play like a master, I retract. They play absolutely alarmingly. I know, because I have lost games to 4.7."

Atkin, Slate, and Frey later wrote microcomputer chess, checkers, and Reversi programs for Odesta. Advertisements cited their Northwestern affiliation and authorship of Chess 4.7, "World Computer Chess Champion, 1977-1980".

Usage examples of "chess".

Seeking Don Juan, they found him playing chess with the alcaide of the palace, and the renegade at once began to comment on the Christian religion in uncomplimentary terms.

The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.

After a few more minutes, Jimmy and Att broke out a pocket chess set and began to play and I turned back to my notes.

Jimmy and Att broke out a pocket chess set and began to play and I turned back to my notes.

That was a few days ago, but to-day, when Bernardine was playing chess with the Swedish Professor, Mrs.

Inevitably, there were card games, checkers, and chess in the bunks, and probably bull sessions.

Sacco and Vanzetti, is I say, and about the Cuyahoga Massacre, about playing chess with old Alexander Hamilton McCone, and on and on.

In the cabin, its lamp hidden from without by deadlights, he found Stephen and Bernard playing chess.

I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess.

Crimean villa he shared with his brother, Vladimir began to compose his first chess problems, a hobby that would become his second extraliterary passion, an overflow valve for surplus creative energy, a training ground in artistic strategy.

But since Hooka had been slain in the famous game of live Darza-and I was genuinely sorry not to have been a witness to that most amazing chess game ever played on Callisto, I assure you!

On the bench rested a tray of oddments including a ball of bright red yarn and two large hooked wooden needles, a wine cup, a chess set carved of ivory, a bowl and spoon, a bundle of rosemary with a sprinkling of pale blue flowers among the spiky leaves, and a writing knife, stoppered inkhorn, and several uncut goose quills.

Here was no less than the gold watch Paul Morphy, meteorically short-reigned King of American chess, had been given by an adoring public in New York City on May 25, 1859, after the triumphal tour of London and Paris which had proven him to be perhaps the greatest chess genius of all time.

The Morphy watch, the watch Paul Morphy had kept his whole short life, despite his growing hatred of chess, the watch he had willed to his French admirer and favorite opponent Jules Arnous de Riviere, the watch that had then mysteriously disappeared, the watch of watcheswas his!

Why the devil should he think that having the Morphy watch should improve his chess game?