zugzwang (Chess)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Chess
Date:	12/08/01 (373 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The world's greatest strategy game, Complexity and warfare in a confined space.

Disadvantages: My brain hurts...

First, a crash course in how to play chess:
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A chessboard consists of 64 squares alternately coloured black and white and arranged in 8 ranks and 8 columns. Each player has sixteen pieces:-
A king; a queen; two bishops; two knights (or horseys);
two rooks (or castles) and eight pawns (NOT prawns, ok?).

The player with the white pieces always moves first.
If a piece is moved onto a square occupied by an enemy piece,
that piece is 'taken' (removed from the board).

THE KING can only move one square at a time (in any direction)
except when CASTLING when it can move two squares towards the rook
(with the rook moving to the other side of the king). N.B. Castling is only allowed if the king and rook have not previously moved and providing the king does not pass over a square which is attacked by an opposing piece

Since the object of the game is to capture your opponents king,
the king cannot be left in any position where it could be taken.

When the king is attacked it is said to be in CHECK
(check can be GIVEN by a piece moving to attack the king, or REVEALED when a piece moving out of the way of another which gives the check)

When in check a player must either:

(1) move his king to a safe square
(2) block the attack with another piece, or
(3) take the piece threatening his king.

If none of those three methods will work, the player cannot save his king, and has therefore lost the game. This is called CHECKMATE.

THE QUEEN is the most powerful piece on the board
and can move any number of squares in any direction.
The queens always start on a square of their own colour.
Incidentally the symbol for a queen looks just like a dooyoo crown. ;-)

ROOKS can move any number of squares but not diagonally.

BISHOPS can only move diagonally, but any number of squares.
This means that
bishops can never move to a different coloured square, hence each player has one bishop which moves on the black squares
and one which is restricted to the white.

A bishop is said to be FIANCHETTOED when it is moved onto the square vacated by the pawn in front of the adjacent knight,
this puts it in an influential position on a long corner-to-corner diagonal.

KNIGHTS are the only pieces that can 'jump' over other pieces.
They always move to the opposite corner of a 3 x 2 rectangle.
(i.e. one square forwards/backwards and two sideways
or two squares forwards/backwards and one sideways.)

PAWNS always move forwards, one square at a time,
except when taking a piece - which they can only do diagonally;
or on their first move when they can advance two squares.
However, if in advancing two squares on its first move a pawn passes over a square which is attacked by an enemy pawn, it can be taken
EN PASSANT (in passing) as if it had only moved forward one square.
A pawn that gets all the way to the back rank can be exchanged
for any other piece (usually a queen).

An EXCHANGE is a consecutive sequence of moves where pieces are taken by both players. Be careful before embarking on an exchange - make sure that you won't come out of it having lost more pieces than your opponent! By clearing pieces off the board, exchanges also simplify the position.

An OPENING GAMBIT is a ploy in which a player allows his opponent
to take one of his pieces in the opening stages of a game, in order
to reach a more favourable position. The player expects to take pieces from his opponent, of at least equivalent value, later in the exchange.

A SACRIFICE is when a player gives up a piece
in order to achieve a winning position.

When one piece attacks two others simultaneously this is called
a FORK (or a SKEWER if one attacked piece is behind the other
.)

STALEMATE is when a player is unable to make any legal move
and the game is then drawn.

ZUGZWANG is when a player can move,
but all possible moves are disadvantageous.


Me & Chess
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Telling you about my personal experience of chess necessitates
the mention of one David Smith. At the start of my fourth and final year
at junior school (what's that in new money, Year 6?) I reached the summit of the chess league ladder (admittedly by default after the older kids left.) Then one day Mr. Farr, the teacher who ran the chess club, asked me
to play a new boy to see if he was any good. Well I never saw it coming.
He was two years below me, "this will be a piece of cake" I thought, wrongly. So it began.

Meanwhile, a generous parent had made a large magnetic chess board for the school. It was duly fixed in place on the back wall of the assembly hall.
Now at the time, there was a BBC2 TV programme where two chess grandmasters would play a game and commentate over their moves. Someone had the bright idea of doing the same thing -
thus making use of our new chess display board.

So, over the course of many breaks and lunch-times, a chess board
and tape recorder were set up in an empty classroom and we would take it in turns to to go in, make a move, and record our thoughts onto tape.
These tapes were then played in assembly while a teacher moved the pieces on the display board. Don't ask me who won all those games, ok? Just don't. To this day I still think he was cheating by rewinding the tape...
I was still chosen to play on board number one when we played against other schools, presumably out of sympathy - Smithy was the better player then, there was no doubt about that. But what annoyed me was that he would frequently lose on board number two!

Smithy's mum once told me he was a 'waster' - well, she got four letters ou
t of six right! He's still out there somewhere, so let me know if you see him. He's small, dark-haired, loud and contrary. and it was his birthday yesterday (November 8th).


Tips
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The key to chess is using all your pieces in co-ordination.
You need to DEVELOP them (move them into useful positions)
as quickly as possible early on in the game. You will also need
to learn the basic opening sequences (and the pitfalls thereof.)

Create space for yourself by using your pawns as a barrier behind which your own pieces can move in relative safety. The former world champion Garry Kasparov would often use his pawn formation like a steamroller slowly moving down the board penning in and crushing his opponent.

Sometimes I used to make my brain hurt calculating what my opponent's next move(s) would be, but quite often I'd still miss something obvious. Years later when I started playing again, I found that developing pieces into strong positions, in which they are well co-ordinated, is much more effective than trying to second guess what my opponent is planning.
Chess is like war in an enclosed space, if your pieces aren't working together as a concerted force, and your opponents are, you're in trouble!

You can also play online of course, at Yahoo games for example:

http://games.yahoo.com/games/login?page=ch

or there's the Internet Chess Club: http://www.chessclub.com/


The official website of the world chess federation is:

http://counter.fide.com/cgi-bin/counter/main.p l


and Garry Kasparov's site is at: http://www.kasparovchess.com/
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