James Eade

Setting up your chessboard is the first step in playing a game of chess. Take your time setting up the board, until you’re confident that you know where everything goes: The rooks go on the corner squares. Place the knights next to the rooks. Put the bishops on the board next to the knights. After the bishops come the queens.

Before you can play a game of chess, you need to know how to move the pieces (legally). A chess piece’s power is tied to its mobility. The more mobile a piece is, the more powerful it is. Here's how the various pieces can move: Pawns: Pawns can only move forward. On their first move, they can move one or two squares.

In 1971, Robert James Fischer (nicknamed Bobby) shocked the chess world by winning 19 consecutive games against an extremely high level of competition. This feat has been compared to throwing back-to-back no-hitters in major league baseball.During his peak playing period, from the mid 1960s into the early '70s, players spoke of "Fischer Fever," where they felt ill just having to play against him.

Many commercial chess-playing computer programs (chess players call them engines) are available. Most of them can beat just about anyone. One of the most powerful engines, Stockfish, is free to download. Another championship program, Komodo, offers its latest versions for sale, and its outdated versions (which are still incredibly strong) for free.

Mikhail Botvinnik won seven consecutive major tournaments from 1941 to 1948, including the tournament held to determine the champion upon Alexander Alekhine's death. There's little doubt that he would have defeated Alekhine, and it seems certain that he was the best player of the 1940s.Remarkably, Botvinnik was an engineer by profession and didn't dedicate himself to chess the way most of the champions did.

The Queen’s Gambit is more than the name of the latest Netflix mega-hit. It’s one of the oldest and best openings in the game of chess and the one Beth, the main character in The Queen's Gambit, uses (spoiler alert!) to defeat Russian grandmaster Vasily Borgov to become the world’s top chess player. Going for the Queen's Gambit.

Unless you have amazing powers of visualization (à la Beth Harmon from The Queen's Gambit), chess requires a chess set and a board for you to play on. The chessboard is divided up into sections called ranks and files, and the set is composed of different chessmen with different movements and powers. After you understand all of these topics, you can start playing the great game of chess, with checkmate as your goal.

Alexander Alekhine was single-minded in his pursuit of the world championship, and his drive eventually, in 1927, overcame José Raúl Capablanca's skill. Alekhine's results were never as dominating as those of the players higher on this list, but he still managed an impressive run.From 1921 through 1927, he competed in 15 major tournaments and won eight of them.

Although Garry Kasparov eventually eclipsed Anatoly Karpov, no one would dream of leaving Karpov off this list. Karpov won the championship by default when Bobby Fischer refused to defend his title.Many people considered this a black mark on Karpov's record because Karpov never actually won the title by playing a championship match, but that's silly.