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From the FIDE Laws of Chess:
50-move rule:
9.3 The game is drawn, upon a correct claim by a player having the move, if:
(...)
the last 50 moves by each player have been completed without the movement of any pawn and without any capture.
75-move rule:
9.6 If one or both of the following occur(s) then the game is drawn: (...) any series of at ...
53
Rashid Nezhmetdinov, aka “Super Nezh”, was clearly GM strength, having a plus score in the 20 games he played against World Champions, including a plus score against his friend, Tal. He was also a five-time Russian champion (this title predates the Soviet Union, and is not the same as champion of the Soviet Union).
I was a Russian linguist in the Air Force ...
51
Dummy Pawns
Today, it is little known that for forty years at the height of the British Empire, dummy pawns were the scourge of tournament play, and even grandmasters ran scared. (Possible exaggeration here.)
The heresy raged from 1862-1904. See Eminent Victorian Chess Players: Ten Biographies by Tim Harding. However, the origins of the dummy pawn goes back ...
36
No. The vast majority of club level players still play like the vast majority of club level players always did. Changes in knowledge about chess mostly apply to high levels of play; the kind of mistakes class A players make were already known to be mistakes for ages, and opening theory doesn't help much if your opponent deviates from theory at move 5 anyway.
...
36
Edward Winter cites Owen J. Clarkin (Ottawa, Canada) who quotes from The Modern Chess Instructor by W. Steinitz (New York, 1889) which in turn cites this example from Lowenthal's Book of the London Chess Congress, 1862:
[Title "Dummy pawn motivation"]
[fen "r/1Pp5/2P3p1/8/6pb/4p1kB/4P1p1/6K1 w - - 0 1"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
1....
32
Stalemate is a draw in classical chess yet there are other chess variants both historical and modern where stalemate is not a draw.
Very early versions of Chess, such as Shatranj Chess (props to Andrew Latham) declare the player causing stalemate the winner and even today there are callings to return to that rule.
for example:
Larry Kaufman Chess Life ...
29
There is nothing in principle preventing players from long tournaments. Or maybe yes if they are way too long, like the first Karpov - Kasparov match (had to be postponed for health reasons), but these cases are far from the norm.
If we stick to the elite games, I would say that the main reasons why tournaments have become shorter is that there are many ...
27
In my thread on the English Chess Forum, which seemed to make the world go crazy on the subject, I gave all the major and minor events in the history of the “legal” triple check that my extensive research has uncovered. This loophole was even talked about recently in Episode 20 of "The Chess Pit" at the 12:13 mark. Here is all information in a ...
25
Wikipedia claims that
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 ...
25
I think they certainly have increased their ELO, but more importantly, their overall chess strength. ELO is only a rating relative to others in the pool so it may tend to go up more slowly if everyone in the pool gets better, which they have collectively.
First, you need to take an average of the top players, rather than look at just two incredibly special ...
22
As Totero notes, changing stalemate in this fashion would drastically change endgame play. Currently, one must learn how to recognize different King/Pawn endings, and how other pieces interact with these endings. Opposite- vs same-color Bishops, Knight/Pawn vs Knight, Rook/Pawn vs Rook, and other basic variations.
Changing stalemate to a win would throw ...
22
I disagree with all answers treating the gnat and elephant as allegory for players of varying skill level.
Rather, the actions of the gnat and elephant are the main point. Chess as a game with rules is not very broad. There are only six types of piece. Half the actual number of pieces are identical and have moves that are almost as simple as it is possible ...
22
Was playing with both hands ever allowed in chess?
Yes, before 1997. Hence in 1995 Kasparov was not breaking the rules.
The key article in the the FIDE Laws of Chess is:
Article 4: The act of moving the pieces
4.1 Each move must be made with one hand only.
This first appeared in the 1997 edition of the FIDE Laws of Chess.
The previous edition, ...
19
I am surprised that the paper "Intrinsic Chess Ratings" by Ken Regan and Guy Haworth hasn't been posted yet. It is exactly what's asked for, serious research into rating inflation. PDF
Basically they got games from three periods (1976-1979, 1991-1994, 2006-2009), in several rating ranges (e.g. both players within 10 points of 2200, within 10 points of 2300, ...
19
Practically speaking, if the king were any more powerful, checkmate or capture would be impossible.
The Queen originated as the Advisor. The Advisor was powerful, but not as powerful as the modern Queen, however. Why did the Advisor become the Queen? Having more than one Queen per side would debase the game, and there are two each of the other pieces. ...
19
If you really mean "dubious", then no one really fits this description since Steinitz, who liked to, for example, go for walks with his King when playing the King's Gambit as White. But people didn't really know better back then.
If you're willing to relax "dubious" to "offbeat", the first player that comes to mind is Bent Larsen, one of the strongest ...
18
Perhaps another factor is that transport and communications were so much more limited in the 19th century, that a short tournament would not have justified lengthy travel, particularly for transatlantic professionals visiting Europe. At an amateur level in Britain, the burgeoning train network allowed evening visits from one provincial town to a neighbouring ...
17
I think stalemate is a draw for the same reason that dropping the white ball when potting black is a loss in 8-ball pool - it gives the losing player a granule of hope until the very end, and it ensures that the winner must be clinical in securing his win.
With regards to whether this flows logically from the other rules of the game - chess is, after all, a ...
17
In pretty much any endeavor that requires one to develop or acquire complex sets of skills, be it chiefly intellectual or chiefly physical, starting young will generally be a huge boon simply because of the fact that younger brains are more plastic than older brains; they can more readily adapt to new sorts of tasks and information. Because of that fact, ...
17
Magnus Carlsen drops out of World Championship cycle (contemporaneous chessbase.com article)
Largely he didn't like the format (knockout matches rather than round-robin tournament).
Carlsen wrote a letter to FIDE explaining why he skipped the Candidates Matches, quoted in part below:
After careful consideration I’ve reached the conclusion that the
...
17
It is basically just a shortcut that cuts the game short by one move once the outcome is obvious. According to Wikipedia, "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 ...
17
Chess as an activity is not appealing to many women. Because there are so few women in open tournaments, it can be quite intimidating for a girl or woman to start playing the game. Imagine being one of the 1-3% of female players at a large open tournament. They receive constant attention and stares (it is much worse if they are conventionally attractive). ...
17
An unsorted list of arguments for the vitality of chess problems (probably my answer is a little bit biased because I am an enthusiastic chess composer ...)
Computers: A lot of new ideas have been developed during the last decades. One reason for it is the rise of computer programs which help to check the correctness of a chess problem. This simplified the ...
16
From this Chess.com Discussion
In terms of games played, it would be Tal with 95 games (46 wins, 49 draws) from October 23, 1973 to October 16, 1974. He also has the second longest streak of 84 games (47 wins, 39 draws) from July 1972 to April 1973.
In terms of time, Capablanca was undefeated for 63 games (40 wins, 23 draws from February 10, 1916 to ...
15
There have been some shorter ones, for instance
Kasparov-Kramnik (2000), game 7, draw in 11 moves.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1252046
Kasparov-Anand (1995), game 18, draw in 12 moves.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1241980
Karpov-Kasparov (1984), game 29, draw in 13 moves.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=...
15
In Claude Shannon's paper of 1949, he quotes those values as part of his evaluation function:
Most of the maxims and principles of correct play are really assertions about evaluating positions, for example: -
(1) The relative values of queen, rook, bishop, knight and pawn are about 9, 5, 3, 3, 1, respectively. Thus other things being equal (!) if we ...
15
Today we get tournaments such as:
Chess World Cup 2005 - 128 players
Chess World Cup 2007 - 128 players
Chess World Cup 2009 - 128 players
Chess World Cup 2011 - 128 players
Chess World Cup 2013 - 128 players
Chess World Cup 2015 - 128 players
Chess World Cup 2017 - 128 players
Chess World Cup 2019 - 128 players
Of course these tournaments only last ...
15
The question is apparently based on a misunderstanding of how ELO ratings work. There is absolutely no mechanism by which the overall increase in players' strength would lead to increase in their ELO. The actual value of the ELO rating bears no meaning; nor does the comparison of ELO at distant times. The only thing that has direct relevance is the ...
15
In order to qualify for the title of Grandmaster, a player must
achieve three Grandmaster norms.
That is not accurate. The regulations for the award of FIDE titles are given here.
There are two ways to become a grandmaster. Achieving norms and reaching a certain rating is one way but there are also Direct Titles. The FIDE handbook defines these like this:...
14
In 1910 Leonardo Torres developed a machine he called "El Ajedrecista". It was capable of automatically playing K+R vs K endgames without human intervention. It was publicly demonstrated for the first time in 1914.
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