Chess: Difference between revisions
added the windmill motive as Cycle of Hurting
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This article is about the game. See ''[[Chess (theatre)|Chess]]'' for [[The Musical]].
'''Chess''' is a [[Turn-Based Strategy]] tabletop board game, and is one of the most influential games in history. It is at least [[Older Than Feudalism]]; it has more [[Serious Business|scholarship and study]] devoted to it than any other game, with only [[Go]] coming close; it contains more possible directions a match can go than there are atoms in the entire universe; and it has [[Chess (theatre)|a play]] named after it.
The game of chess is thought to have originated in India, possibly as a teaching tool for educating royalty in the practice of leading an army. Its exact origins are [[Shrouded in Myth]]; at least one legend attributes the very first game of chess as a reenactment of an actual battle. Whatever its exact origins, the game quickly spread westward into Persia, and from there (with a little help from Islamic invaders) to the Middle East and Europe. The game as it exists now came into being in the 15th century, when the game was overhauled to increase the maneuverability of the pieces and reduce the amount of time it took to play a single game. The most notable changes were the Queen changing from being able only move one square at a time diagonally to being the strongest piece on the board, Pawns being able to move two squares on their first move, and Bishops now able to move any number of squares diagonally rather than being limited to ''exactly'' two (an incredible limitation which restricted it to only 8 squares on the whole board, even if it did leap over an intervening piece of either colour).
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* [[Amazon Brigade]]: If you stop to think about how pawns can promote into not just queens, but also any of the ''other'' pieces besides the king—knights, bishops, ''and'' rooks—you start wondering if maybe the king is the only actual male on your force, if promoted pieces are indistinguishable from initial pieces.
* [[Anthropomorphic Personification]] : Caissa, goddess of chess. Yes, chess players have even invented their own goddess. [[wikipedia:Caïssa|Really]].
* [[Attack! Attack! Attack!]]: Some players adopt this as their plan, organizing an attack on enemy king before developing all of their pieces and careless about weaknesses in their position. Games of such players usually last short number of moves, whether they won or lost.
* [[Attack Pattern Alpha]]: Openings. "Start with a conventional Ruy Lopez, and if Black moves into the Cordel Defence, take the game into the Benelux Variant. If they opt for an Open Defence, try to press them into using the Riga Variation rather than the main line, though the Dilworth Attack also leads to an interesting endgame..."
** '''''[http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Chess-Openings-Eric-Schiller/dp/1580420486/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256714379&sr=8-1 Times] [http://www.amazon.com/Gambit-Chess-Openings-Eric-Schiller/dp/1580420575/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c five] [http://www.amazon.com/Unorthodox-Openings-Publishings-Essential-Repertoire/dp/1580420729/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b thousand]...'''''
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* [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]]: Chess has a whole list of them.
**The Immortal Game between Anderson and Kieseritzky took place in the Simpson's-In-The-Strand coffeehouse in London. The two players were taking a break during a high profile tournament to head down the street and have a friendly game and ended up by chance having one of the most famous games in chess history.
* [[Curb Stomp Battle]]: Matches can be horribly one-sided with one player casually slaughtering the other's pieces before finding (or if they're cruel or lack the killer instinct, exploiting) an opening for a checkmate. Especially common between lower-level players with enough skill to exploit an obvious blunder but not always to avoid making one.
* [[Cycle of Hurting]]: The [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill_(chess) windmill]. This is a motive where one player repeatedly moves one piece, delivering checks with every move, and in the meantime often slaughters enemy pieces one by one, while the opponent can do nothing but move his king back and forth.
* [[Deliberately Monochrome]]: Most sets are black and white, or just plain dark and light.
* [[Denial of Diagonal Attack]]: Rooks can only attack vertically or horizontally, but they can travel any number of squares in that direction. ''Inverted'' by Bishops and Pawns, who can ''only'' attack diagonally.
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** Geo-Chess: Chess played on a donut-shaped board with three players. Each player has twice as many of each piece except the king and queen. Pawns can move forward/back and left/right one square at a time, and there are six grey rectangles the size of two squares that allow bishops to change colors. Optional rules allow for each player to respawn each piece once. Picture here: http://www.abstractstrategy.com/geo-chess.html
** Bughouse: a two-on-two variant where your teammate plays the opposite color. When you capture a piece on your board, you give it to him and he can ''spawn'' it on his board, ''anywhere''. [[Hilarity Ensues]].
*** Crazyhouse: [[Serial Escalation|A 2 player variant of Bughouse]] that's all about captured pieces being brought [[Back
** Byzantine, or Round Chess: Played on a circular board with sixteen sectors and four concentric rings. Simulates making the board into a cylinder.
** Cold War Chess: Played on a standard board in standard configuration. No captures are allowed until one of the kings has been placed in check.
** Four Man Chess. Two teams of two people, each controlling one side of the board. The twist? You are not allowed to discuss the game, even in code, with your teammate. Leads to a lot of frustration if your partner can't read the board or your mind.
** Kriegspiel: Chess played blind. Two players play on separate boards, each not seeing the other. They have to deduce the layout of their opponent's pieces with the help of a referee who tells them whether the move they just made was legal or not, and/or if it captured an opposing piece!
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** [[The Lancer]]: The Knight.
** [[The Smart Guy]]: The Bishop.
** [[The Hero]]: The King. Without him, the band falls apart.
** [[The Big Guy]]: The Rook, your main line of defense.
* In a black piece [[Five-Bad Band]] the roles line up a bit differntly.
** [[Big Bad]]: The King
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** [[The Brute]]: The Rook
** [[The Evil Genius]]: The Bishop
** [[The Dark Chick]]: More The Knight than the queen, they move quirkily, they're horses and they have the most different strategy.
* [[Four-Temperament Ensemble|Five Temperament Ensemble]]
** The Queen is Sanguine
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** The Knight is Supine
* [[Fragile Speedster]]: The bishop. It can move from one end of the board to another in a single move, but isn't particularly powerful.
* [[Freaky Is Cool]]: One of the most popular areas of chess theory, for everyone from amateurs to Grandmasters, has been to explore and experiment with truly ''bizarre'' openings, and discover if there are viable possibilities for success among them.
* [[Gambit Pileup]]: This is how many strategies end up, especially on the advanced levels of play.
** Even more so in variants such as [http://www.intuitor.com/forchess/ cutthroat forchess].
* [[Gender Bender]]: For some reason, the pawn's sex is flexible enough for it to promote to a [[Always Female|queen]] or a [[Always Male|bishop]] ([[Bellisario's Maxim|or a stone tower]]).
** [[Bottom|"And they let children play this, you say."]]
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* [[Indy Ploy]]: "I see only one move ahead, but it is always the correct one." – Jose R. Capablanca
* [[Instant Win Condition]]: Your opponent might have ten pieces on you, but it doesn't mean a damn thing if you put him in checkmate.
** In a timed game, if you run out of time, it doesn't matter if you have been [[Curb Stomp Battle|curbstomping]] your opponent, and are a few moves away from delivering checkmate.
*** That depends. Playing to run out your opponent's clock is against the rules, and the Arbiter can penalize a player for doing so. But if your opponent's playing normally when you time out, yes, you're done.
* [[Insufferable Genius]]: A few of the more notable masters. Bobby Fischer is one of the most famous examples:
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"There's no one alive I can't beat."
"I add status to any tournament I attend."|Bobby Fischer, 11th World Champion of Chess}}
** And this isn't even getting into his assertion that he could play a knight down against any woman and still win.
* [[I Surrender, Suckers]]: The entire point of a gambit.
* [[Joke Character]]: Underpromotion of a pawn (to something other than a queen). It's usually done when promoting to a queen would allow stalemate, or when it's crucial to cause check on the promoting move.
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* [[No Ending]]: These days, the checkmate and stalemate are virtually extinct in high-level play. Nearly all master-level games end with a resignation or agreed draw (often leaving beginners in the dark about why the winner was winning, or why the draw was inevitable).
* [[No Pronunciation Guide]]: Kind of a given, since positions and variations are named after players from all over the world. Probably the most commonly misread names are the Pirc Defence ("peerts") and the Lucena position ("loo-thay-na").
* [[Non-Action Guy]]: The King. Though he [[Took a Level
* [[Obvious Rule Patch]]: The "same rank" rule of [[Switch-Out Move|castling]] (curing a [[Good Bad Bug]]). Also, the 50 move rule, which at one point, was itself patched, patched again, and then finally unpatched.
** You used to be allowed to promote a pawn to one of the other player's pieces or leave it as a Pawn. You could also move into triple check (only check and double check counted as check) and checkmate with an illegal move.
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* [[Sadistic Choice]]: Forks force a player to choose which piece is captured.
* [[Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl]]: The king and queen.
* [[Senseless Sacrifice]]: Sometimes made by inexperienced players as a result of misjudgement.
** There is also a unique kind of ''forced'' senseless sacrifice. It happens when one king is already close to being checkmated. If the king himself cannot get out of check, and the checking piece cannot be captured, one of his own pieces must be put inbetween him and the checking piece (given the checking piece is a queen, rook or bishop). If the intervening piece ends up on an unsafe square, the opponent can subsequently just capture it and deliver checkmate.
** Some either inexperienced or sadistic players prefer [[Leave No Survivors|capturing all enemy pieces before checkmating]] their opponent, even if this means they take ''much'' longer to win the game than necessary. Particularly funny if the final checkmate fails and [[Gainax Ending|becomes a stalemate]] instead. (Experienced players [[Averted Trope|avert]] this by a timely resignation when they're on the losing side. Also a time limit makes this strategy prone to [[Hoist by His Own Petard|backfire]] as a result of time-out.)
* [[Serious Business]]: When entire lives have been dedicated to mastering the game as much as is humanly possible, you better believe chess is ''very'' serious business.
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* [[Surrounded by Idiots]]: In many checkmates, some of the king's escape routes are blocked by allies. There's even a type of mate called smothered mate, where a lone knight gives checkmate to a king who is completely surrounded by pieces that are supposed to be helping him.
* [[Sweet Polly Oliver]]/[[Tomato Surprise]]: Pawns that Queen.
* [[Take a Third Option]]: When two pieces are under attack, a player is forced to give up one of them on the next move in most cases. However, they can sometimes overcome this predicament by putting the opposing king in check by moving one of those two pieces. Since the opponent is forced to respond to the check immediately, the player can move the other piece to safety on the next move.
* [[Taking the Bullet]]: One way of protecting the king is to move a piece between the king and the piece giving check.
* [[Teen Genius]]: Many World Champions were child (or teen) prodigies, such as Boris Spassky and Mikhail Tal, but Jose Capablanca is probably the iconic case. He learned chess by 4 years old by [[Awesomeness By Analysis|watching his dad playing]] and by the age of 12, he had already beaten the Cuban Chess Champion.
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* [[Timed Mission]]: Most organized competitions give each player only a certain amount of time to make all of their moves. If a player's time runs out, that player automatically loses.
* [[Too Awesome to Use]]: The Queen, especially in the opening. Some openings take advantage of the mentality, such as the Parham Attack (which can develop into the Scholar's Mate, which is based around having the Queen sit next to the King, while the Bishop covers the Queen and prevents the King from taking her).
* [[Took a Level
** The bishop was also weaker in the past (only two squares at a time diagonally).
** Also, pawns when they get across the board.
** The King goes from [[Glass Cannon|"vulnerable, protect at all costs"]] to "[[Authority Equals Asskicking]]" as the board starts to open up in the endgame.
* [[Updated Rerelease]]: The "New Chess" rules adopted in the 15th century and currently in use.
* [[Unstable Equilibrium]]: Since captured pieces are removed from play permanently, it is very difficult to stage a comeback once you're outnumbered.
* [[We Cannot Go on Without You]] / [[Decapitated Army]]: As noted above, if the King is ever placed in checkmate, the game ends.
* [[We Have Reserves]]: Though more central to checkers then chess, a player with enough material advantage should feel free to win through attrition. This is also a common checkmate theme—a few pieces sacrifice themselves to weaken the defenses around the opponent's king; the reserves rush through what's left to deliver checkmate.
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