|
Published:
August 29, 2016

Chess For Dummies

Overview

Want to play chess like a champ? Dummies can help.

From Netflix's “The Queen’s Gambit” to podcasts, virtual and mobile gaming, and beyond, chess is back in a big way. But, with all those kings, queens, and knights, chess can be a royal pain to grasp. Chess For Dummies is here to help beginners wrap their minds around the rules of the game, make sense of those puzzling pieces, and sharpen their chess strategy such that even Paul Morphy would be impressed. You’ll learn the laws of chess, its lingo, and engage in the art of the attack with the easy-to-follow, step-by-step explanations found in the latest edition of Chess For Dummies.

Whether you’re playing chess online, in a tournament, or across the dining room

table with a family member or friend, this hands-on guide is sure to capture your interest (and your opponent's queen), getting you up to speed on the game and its components and giving you the know-how you need to put the principles of play into action from the opening to the endgame.

  • Grasp the rules of play and the nuances of each phase of the game
  • Familiarize yourself with the pieces and the board
  • Pick the perfect chess set and chessboard for you
  • Get to know each of the pieces and their powers

If you feel like you’re in a stalemate before you even begin a game, Chess For Dummies is your guide to forcing moves, raking bishops, and skewering your opponents like a true champion.

Read More

About The Author

James Eade is a United States Chess Federation (USCF) chess master as well as a chess writer, tournament organizer, and teacher. He is the author of Chess For Dummies.

Sample Chapters

chess for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

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.

HAVE THIS BOOK?

Articles from
the book

The number of kids playing chess seems to increase every year. Chess camps and chess-in-the-schools programs have sprung up all across the country. This is in large part because adults know that the kids are learning, while the kids think they are playing. Lots of kids learn chess in school Chess programs have spread all across the country.
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.
A chess database is just like any other sortable database of information, but it contains chess games. If you want to see all of the games that Garry Kasparov played in 1990, for example, you can sort the database to list only those games. You can even search databases containing millions of games for the exact position that occurred in one of your own games to see what others did.
After you've been in a chess club for a while, you may feel ready to jump into tournament play — but you need to know some basics first. In the following sections, you find out how to find tournaments, watch your time as you play, and establish a rating. To play a tournament game, you should know all the rules of competition (check out the seventh edition of the US Chess Federation's, USCF, rule book) and be familiar with chess etiquette.
One of the very first challenges that computer programmers took on was the creation of chess programs, because they saw chess play as one of the ultimate challenges in computer applications.First, programmers had to decide on the best approach to simulate chess play. Then, as new technologies exploded on the scene, chess programs evolved accordingly.
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.
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.
Chess is supposed to be fun, but quite often people take it very seriously. When you play a no-nonsense Noel, you should know the do's and don'ts of chess etiquette.Chess etiquette is especially important in tournament chess. In a serious encounter, both players are staring at the board for hours at a time. Your hypersensitive opponent will surely notice a raised eyebrow, and a sneeze may cause someone to go into shock.
You can find two types of websites for playing chess online: free and pay-to-play. The pay-to-play sites are for serious chess players, so unless you count yourself among them, stick to the free sites.Whether you're paying to play or playing for free, you need to register and create an online ID. Below are some popular free and pay-to-play websites.
Many great chess websites are available today, providing all kinds of information and learning opportunities. For example, most member nations of the International Chess Federation, or Fédération Internationale des Échecs (also known as FIDE, pronounced FEE day), offer their own sites.Here are some sites you might be interested in: US Chess Federation Chess Federation of Canada English Chess Federation Some of the most important chess information you can get online is about other chess players.
Latvian Mikhail Tal's (1936–1992) health troubles kept him from performing at peak efficiency after 1960. Mikhail Botvinnik once said, "If Tal would learn to program himself properly, he would be impossible to play."Tal won the world championship title from Botvinnik in 1960 but lost the return match. Before this return match, Tal became unwell with kidney trouble but refused to postpone play.
The chessboard is divided into ranks (numbers) and files (letters). This is used as an identifier for when the players move their chess pieces. There are eight of each, and each is comprised of eight squares of equal size: Ranks are rows that go from side to side across the chessboard and are referred to by numbers.
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.
Over the past several decades, tremendous progress has been made in the use of computers as chess-teaching tools. Some programs are specifically designed to teach chess to kids, such as Chesster. You can find it at Chess News. (Click the Shop link, then "Search" at the top of the page and enter "Chesster" in the Search bar.
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.
You were probably taught that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. While this is a geometric fact (not counting wormholes) in everyday life, it's a geometric option on the chess board. Distance is counted on the chessboard not by inches, feet, or parsecs, but by squares.You may need to get from Point A on the chessboard to Point B, but your opponent may not want you there.
Rook endings are the most common endings in chess — mainly because rooks are usually the last pieces you develop and the last you and your opponent exchange. These endings, however, are awfully tricky — even masters commit elementary mistakes.Akiba Rubinstein (1882–1961), a grandmaster from Poland, is generally considered to have been the finest rook and pawn expert of his time.
In 1993, the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE, pronounced FEE-day), world championship match was supposed to be between Russia's Garry Kasparov, the then-current champion, and England's Nigel Short, Kasparov's rightful challenger. However, Kasparov wasn't happy with the prize fund, so he ditched FIDE and helped found the Professional Chess Association (PCA).
If you don't get enough controversy from trying to establish the best chess players of all time, ask who the strongest player to never win the world champion title was. That question usually does the trick. The prime candidates, in chronological order, are as follows. Mikhail Chigorin (1850–1908), Russia: Mikhail Chigorin played two championship matches with Wilhelm Steinitz and lost both of them, but these matches were considered to be closely contested, and the second match in particular could have gone either way.
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.
Emanuel Lasker is an interesting case. Some people put him first on the list, and others put him toward the bottom. The major criticism is that he played infrequently. The major argument in his favor is that he was world champion from 1894 until 1921 — longer than any other player in history.Many people believe that Lasker ducked the toughest opposition, but his tournament and match results clearly show that he was the world's best player for a considerable period of time.
Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, Garry Kasparov won the world championship in 1985 in one of five titanic struggles with Anatoly Karpov. He was finally defeated by Vladimir Kramnik in a 2000 match. Kasparov's tournament results during his peak, from the mid-1980s into the 21st century, were equally impressive.What moves him to the head of this list is the fact that he was so much more active than the majority of his predecessors.
José Raúl Capablanca was world champion from 1921 to 1927. Many people considered him the strongest player in the world prior to 1921, but he was unable to arrange a match with the then-champion, Emanuel Lasker.When public sentiment became overwhelming in demand of a match, Lasker simply tried to resign his title to Capablanca.
It is harder than ever to dominate at the world-class level. Sophisticated software and the international emphasis on identifying and nurturing young chess talent has given rise to an amazing number of first-class players. Somehow Carlsen has managed to stand out among his peers.It isn't news when he wins. It's news when he doesn't.
Paul Morphy's career was meteoric. He burned brightly for a short period of time, in the mid-19th century, and then never played again. Moving him up or down this list depending upon how much or how little you value longevity is quite sensible.Morphy defeated all the best players of his day with the exception of Howard Staunton — who managed to avoid playing Morphy.
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.
The first world champion, Wilhelm Steinitz was considered the best player in the world for a period of about 20 years. By virtue of his match and tournament record, Steinitz was probably the best player in the world during the late 1860s and certainly was by the early 1870s. From 1862 to 1894, Steinitz had an unbroken string of 24 match victories.
Generally speaking, chess tournament competition comes in three varieties: the Swiss system, round robin, and match. The Swiss system, or "Swiss" for short, is the most popular in the United States. Matches and round robin competitions are usually more expensive to organize. The Swiss system Most weekend tournaments in the United States are run according to the rules of the Swiss system.
In chess, check is an attack on an enemy king; this attack can’t be ignored. If the check can’t be neutralized, it is checkmate and the game is over. Stalemate occurs when one player has no legal moves, but his king isn’t in check. Here are a few additional details on check, checkmate, and stalemate in chess: Check: An attack on a king by either an opposing piece or an opposing pawn is called check.
https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6630d85d73068bc09c7c436c/69195ee32d5c606051d9f433_4.%20All%20For%20You.mp3

Frequently Asked Questions

No items found.