Wilhelm Steinitz was dethroned in 1894, in a series of games played across North America. There are some grumbles about the man who would beat him, Emmanuel Lasker, namely that he hadn’t played either of the other potential challengers before squaring up to Steinitz. However, this seems to be sour grapes as the other two [...]
Believe it or not there’s a sport that takes the glamour of chess and combines it with the brutality of boxing. In fact the World Chess Boxing Association has held over a dozen international events since it was formed in 2008. A Chessboxing match is composed of 11 rounds – switching from a 4 minute [...]
We’re not talking about a chess set swap shop here – though that would be kind of cool, but rather the exchange of pieces of equal value for each other. Obviously the ideal in chess is to take your opponents pieces for free, but in most cases your opponent is likely to be quite stingy [...]
Castling is one of those moves that often confuses people, there are in fact three ways to achieve castling. The first is long (that’s when you castle with the Queen’s side rook), the second is short (King’s side) and the third is artificial (which isn’t really castling but it’s where you end up with the [...]
Chess and religion haven’t always made for the happiest of bedfellows in fact they have a (excuse the pun) chequered history. Chess has been banned (and unbanned) by members of the Islamic faith, Catholics, Anglicans, Puritans and Jews. Back in 642 A.D. the Prophet Mohammed’s (PBUH) son-in-law decided that chess would be haram (forbidden) because [...]