Chess Moves – the Rook

The Rook is the next most valuable chess piece after the Queen. It is considered a “chess heavy” along with the queen. The reason these two pieces are considered chess heavies is because either of these chess pieces along with the King can put the opponent’s King in checkmate, something none of the other pieces [...]

Chess Moves – The Queen

The Queen is the most powerful of all the chess game pieces, also making her the most valuable chess piece, other than the King, of course. This is because of her mobility. The Queen can move any number of squares in any direction. Her only limitation is that she cannot jump over pieces.
Because the queen [...]

Staunton Chess Pieces

If you have played chess for any amount of time, I ‘m sure you’ve heard of Staunton Chess Pieces. Staunton Chess Pieces are a style of chess pieces design by Nathaniel Cook and named after Howard Staunton, considered to be one of the best chess players in the mid 1800’s.
Staunton chess pieces became popular very [...]

Chess Moves – The King

The King, as you probably suspect, is the most important of all chess pieces. It is not, however, the most

Variations of Chess – Fischer Random Chess

Back in his day, Bobby Fischer, one of the world’s greatest ever chess players, invented Fischer Random Chess. This is a variant of regular chess where the beginning positions of the pieces are placed at random. This can be played with any standard chess set yet provides more challenge.
Fischer’s idea was to eliminate prepared and [...]

Chess Sets for Namibia

Near the end of October 2009, Bank Windhoek gave over 550 chess sets to the Namibian Chess Federation (NFC). These sets were distributed to about 100 schools in the south of Namibia, by the Namibian Schools Sports Union. In 2008, the NFC, with help from Bank Windhoek distributed 1000 chess sets to schools in the [...]

Chess Piece Values

In the game of chess, each chess

Chess Game Phases

The games of Chess is divided into three phases of play. These are called the opening, the middlegame and the endgame.
The opening of the game is when chess pieces are mobilized, hopefully in an effective pattern. This deployment of forces is sometimes called development.
The middlegame is the phase of the game where battles ensue between [...]

More about the Chess Board

As mentioned in a previous post of mine, the chess board is a geometrically square board of eight rows and eight columns with alternating light and dark squares. The rows are called ranks and the columns are called files.
The ranks (running horizontally) are labeled 1 through 8 beginning at the bottom where the white pieces [...]

The Ancestry of Chess

Who invented Chess and where did it come from? Nobody really knows. There are several theories though.
One theory is that chess evolved from the ancient Chinese game of Xiangqi. Another theory states that it evolved from an old game Chaturanga from India or Afghanistan. Yet others say it evolved out of Persia. Many other cultures [...]

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