"Zug" means simply "move" in this context (as well as in most chess-related contexts). "Zugzwang" refers to the fact that in a given position the obligation to move presents a disadvantage.
The History of "Check"
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In early Sanskrit chess (c. 500–700) the king could be captured and this ended the game. The Persians (c. 700–800) introduced the idea of warning that the king was under attack (announcing check in modern terminology). This was done to avoid the early and accidental end of a game. Later the Persians added the additional rule that a king could not be moved into check or left in check. As a result, the king could not be captured (Davidson 1949:22). Checkmate was thus the logical and only decisive way of ending a game (since if it was checkmate, any move would be illegal) (Davidson 1949:63–64).
Before about 1600 the game could also be won by capturing all of the opponent's pieces other than the king (annihilation or robado) (see bare king). In Medieval times players began to consider it nobler to win by checkmate, so annihilation became a half-win for a while, until it was abandoned (Davidson 1949:63–64)."
Taken from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkmate)
Sorry, it's no jargon, there is nothing or nobody to impress, we just can retype dozens of sections of dictionaries here, so let's change the subject to words not often used, oldfashioned perhaps, forgotten or replaced by better terms...
The first one : "check the queen", long, long times ago, it was polite to announce an attack on the queen...
Even saying "check" when attacking the king is no longer done, so : let's find more !
"Zug" means simply "move" in this context (as well as in most chess-related contexts). "Zugzwang" refers to the fact that in a given position the obligation to move presents a disadvantage.
Thanks! Didn't know that.
Here's more.
Allowing the en passant capture is one of the last major rule changes in European chess that occurred between 1200 and 1600, together with the introduction of the two-square first move for pawns, castling, and the unlimited range for queens and bishops. Spanish master Ruy López de Segura gives the rule in his 1561 book Libro de la invencion liberal y arte del juego del axedrez. In most places the en passant rule was adopted as soon as the rule allowing the pawn to move two squares on its first move, but it was not universally accepted until the Italian rules were changed in 1880.
The motivation for en passant was to prevent the newly added two-square first move for pawns from allowing a pawn to evade capture by an enemy pawn. Asian chess variants, because of their separation from European chess prior to that period, do not feature any of these moves.
Meaning, examples, history, and anything related. I'll start.
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Zugzwang - A situation in a chess game in which a player is forced to make an undesirable or disadvantageous move.
zugzwang (German) [ˈtsuːktsvaŋ] Chess
The term zugzwang was used in German-language chess literature in 1858 (or earlier) (Winter 1997). The first known use of the term in English was by World Champion Emanuel Lasker in 1905 (Winter 2008). The concept of zugzwang (as distinguished from the word) must have been known to players many centuries earlier, since it is necessary to win the elementary king and rook versus king endgame, among others. The concept is also seen in an endgame study published in 1604 by Alessandro Salvio, one of the first writers on the game. It also appeared in Shatranj studies dating back to the early 9th century, over 1000 years before the first known use of the term zugzwang.