What is "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.

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]

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.

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]

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 is a two-player board game.

Chess or CHESS may also refer to:

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 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 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 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 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".