Chess
Article
July 6, 2022
Chess (from the old Provencal and Catalan escac, which in turn descends from the Persian شاه shāh, "king") is a strategy game that takes place on a square board called chessboard, made up of 64 squares (or "houses") of two alternating colors, on which each player has 16 pieces (white or black; translated, "White" and "Black" designate the two challengers): a king, a woman (or "queen"), two bishops, two horses, two towers and eight pedestrians; each square can be occupied by only one piece, which can capture or "eat" the opponent's piece by going to occupy the square; The objective of the game is to checkmate, that is, to threaten the capture of the opposing king so that the other player has no legal moves. probability thanks to the mediation of the Arabs; spread throughout the continent, they reached an almost modern form in the fifteenth century in Italy and Spain, although to arrive at the complete current regulation we must wait until the nineteenth century. Subsequently, starting from the mid-nineteenth century, thanks to Paul Morphy and Wilhelm Steinitz, the strategic foundations of the game began to be codified; in 1886 Steinitz himself, after a challenge against Johannes Zukertort, proclaimed himself the first world champion. Among the most popular games in the world, they can be played anywhere (at a recreational or competitive level): at home, outdoors, in dedicated clubs, via the Internet and sometimes by correspondence; the major official competitions are organized under the aegis of FIDE (the "International Chess Federation"). The game of chess is quite complex: it is estimated that the number of legally allowed combinations of the 32 pieces on the 64 squares of the chessboard is between 1043 and 1050, and that the size of the move tree is approximately 10123; the number of possible different games is about 101050.