Fools mate: This is bad for white because he is opening the e1-h4 diagonal--a very weak one. No peice, except for the f- and g- pawns can reach a square in the diagonal in one move. Read more »
The Ruy Lopez is a chess opening beginning with the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5. While this opening was was first noted in the Gottingen Manuscript around 1490, it is named after Ruy López de Segura, a 16th century Spanish priest who publ... Read more »
The Scandinavian Defense (also known as the Center Counter) consists of the moves 1.e4 d5. Although played by quite a few grandmasters over the years, the Scandinavian is rarely played at the highest levels of chess. After Viswanathan Anand e... Read more »
The number of distinct chess positions after White’s first move is 20 (16 pawn moves and 4 knight moves). There are 400 distinct chess positions after two moves (first move for White, followed by first move for Black). There are 5,362 distin... Read more »
En passant (from French: "in [the pawn's] passing") is a maneuver in chess when a player moves a pawn two squares forward from its starting position, and an opposing pawn could have captured it if it had only moved one square forward... Read more »
This Chess opening involves the first move c4, (called The English Opening because a group of English players in around the 1890's often played it, including Howard Staunton), it is played as one of the main opening choices for white- an alternati... Read more »
The King's Gambit is a chess opening that begins: 1. e4 e5 2. f4 White offers a pawn to divert the Black e-pawn and build a stronger center with d2-d4. Theory has shown that in order for Black to maintain the one pawn advantage, moves must be mad... Read more »
A King's Gambit Accepted variation (1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d5) (ECO classification - C36). The name comes from a tournament, Abbazia 1912, in which all the games had to be a King's Gambit Accepted. The event was won by Rudolf ... Read more »
A German word meaning obligation to move. The term is used for a position in which whoever has the move would obtain a worse result than if it were the opponent’s turn to play. The term was first used in a German chess magazine in 1858. Bel... Read more »
Chess is a game played between two players using 32 pieces (16 each of two distinct colors) on a 64 square board. The earliest known ancestor of modern chess was an Indian game called Chaturanga, where the knight, King and Rooks moved the same bu... Read more »
Share your chess knowledge with the community!
Submit a new wiki article