Chess Endings for Beginners , livre ebook

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140 pages

English

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Originally published early 1900s. A well illustrated and informative book dealing with the various ways to end a game of chess. Contents Include: Pawn Endings - Miscellaneous Endings - Solutions etc.
Many of the earliest games books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing many of these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

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Sport

Autour du sport

Histoire du sport

Chess

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Publié par	Read Books Ltd.
Date de parution	06 septembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781473353060
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	17 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0350€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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CHESS ENDINGS FOR BEGINNERS.
EDITED BY
J. H. BLAKE.
Part I.-Pawn Endings. Part II.-Miscellaneous Endings. Part III.-Solutions.
Every moment now Should be the father of some stratagem.
S HAKESPEARE , II. H ENRY IV. i. 1.
ELEVENTH EDITION
Copyright 2013 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
CONTENTS
The History of Chess
Preface.
Part I. Pawn Endings.
Part II. Miscellaneous Endings.
Part III. Solutions.
The History of Chess
Chess is one of the world s most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide in homes, parks, clubs, online, and in tournaments. It has a long and fascinating history, and is believed to have originated in Eastern India (around 280 - 550 CE), in the Gupta Empire where it was known as chatura ga.
Essentially, chess consists of a two-player strategy board game, played on a chessboard - a checkered gameboard with sixty-four squares arranged in an eight by eight grid. Each player begins the game with sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns - and each of the six pieces moves differently. The objective is to checkmate the opponent s king by placing it under an inescapable threat of capture. To this end, a player s pieces are used to attack and capture the opponent s pieces, while supporting their own. In addition to checkmate, the game can be won by voluntary resignation by the opponent, which typically occurs when too much material is lost, or if checkmate appears unavoidable. A game may also result in a draw in several ways, where neither player wins.
The earliest chess set discovered was found in Sasanian Persia (the last Iranian empire before the rise of Islam), around 600 CE. Here, the game was known as chatrang - literally translating as the four divisions of the military (infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariotry), represented by the pieces that would evolve into the modern pawn, knight, bishop and rook respectively. Chatrang was taken up by the Muslim world after the Islamic conquest of Persia (633-44), where it was then named shatranj , with the pieces largely retaining their Persian names. In Spanish shatranj was rendered as ajedrez , in Portuguese as xadrez , but in the rest of Europe it was replaced by versions of the Persian sh h ( king ), which was familiar as an exclamation and became the English words check and chess .
The game reached Western Europe and Russia by at least three routes, the earliest of which took place in the ninth century. By the year 1000 it had spread throughout Europe. Introduced into the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors in the tenth century, it was described in a famous thirteenth-century manuscript covering shatranj, backgammon, and dice games, named the Libro de los Juegos . This book, directly translating as the Book of Games was commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile, and discusses the three games under the broader categories of games of skill (chess), games of chance (dice), and backgammon - given its own category. These games were not only seen as light entertainment, but they were read as allegorical tales, and even as metaphysical guides to help the players lead a balanced, prudent and virtuous life.
Around 1200, the rules of shatranj started to be modified in southern Europe, and around 1475, several major changes made the game essentially what it is today. These modern rules for the basic moves were first adopted in Italy and Spain. Pawns gained the option of advancing two squares on their first move, while bishops and queens acquired their modern abilities. The queen replaced the earlier vizier chess piece towards the end of the tenth century and by the fifteenth century had become the most powerful piece; consequently modern chess was referred to as Queen s Chess or Mad Queen Chess. These new conventions quickly spread throughout western Europe, and the rules concerning stalemate were finalized in the early nineteenth century. The resulting standard game is sometimes referred to as western chess or international chess in order to distinguish it from its predecessors as well as different (regional) versions.
Writings about the theory of how to play chess began to appear in the fifteenth century. The Repetici n de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez ( Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess ) by Spanish churchman Luis Ramirez de Lucena was published in Salamanca in 1497. Lucena and later masters like Portuguese Pedro Damiano, Italians Giovanni Leonardo Di Bona and Gioachino Greco, and Spanish bishop Ruy L pez de Segura developed elements of openings and started to analyze simple endgames. In the eighteenth century, the centre of European chess life moved from the Southern European countries to France. The two most important French masters were Fran ois-Andr Danican Philidor, who discovered the importance of pawns for chess strategy, and Louis-Charles Mah de La Bourdonnais, who won a famous series of matches with the Irish master Alexander McDonnell in 1834. Centres of chess activity in this period were coffee houses in big European cities such as the Caf de la R gence in Paris and Simpson s Divan in London.
Similarly to early-modern opinions on chess, during the Age of Enlightenment, the game was also viewed as a means of self improvement. Benjamin Franklin, in his article The Morals of Chess (1750), wrote:

The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it.
With these or similar hopes, chess is taught to children in schools around the world today. As the nineteenth century progressed, chess organization developed quickly. Many chess clubs, chess books, and chess journals appeared. There were correspondence matches between cities; for example, the London Chess Club played against the Edinburgh Chess Club in 1824, and the first modern chess tournament was organized by Howard Staunton, a leading English chess player. It was held in London in 1851. It was won by the relatively unknown German Adolf Anderssen, who was hailed as the leading chess master, and his brilliant, energetic attacking style became typical for the time - although it was later regarded as strategically shallow.
After the end of the nineteenth century, the number of master tournaments and matches held annually quickly grew. Some sources state that in 1914 the title of chess Grandmaster was first formally conferred by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia to Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch, and Marshall, but this is a disputed claim. In 1927, the Women s World Chess Championship was established; and the first to hold the title was Czech-English master Vera Menchik. Since the second half of the twentieth century, an entirely new development in the game has been witnessed - that of computers. Machines have been programmed to play chess with increasing success, to the point where the strongest home computers play chess at a higher level than the best human players. In the past two decades computer analysis has contributed significantly to chess theory, particularly in the endgame, and the computer Deep Blue was the first machine to overcome a reigning World Chess Champion in a match when it defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997.
Chess is a very special type of board game, and today is played the world over. Its simplicity is only matched by the level of skill necessary to be a true master of the game - though it can be enjoyed by young and old alike. As is evident in the latest technical developments in chess, it is continuing to develop in the present day, though the very basics of the game remain unchanged from its ancient inception. It is hoped that the current reader enjoys this book on the subject.
PREFACE.

Beyond the mode in which this collection of End Studies is presented to players, little originality is claimed by the compiler, as most of the positions are found in larger works on the royal game.
The examples chosen illustrate the most commonly recurring forms of end games, and similar ones will be met by the student in actual play.
If the student is anxious to make progress, the solutions at the end of the book should be used as little as possible, in fact only for verification and comparison. Using the book in this way, the player will be surprised how many games he will be enabled to win or draw, which he would otherwise lose.
The compiler wishes to express his obligation to M. Numa Preti, for positions from Strat gie Raisonn e des Fins de Partie du Jeu D Echecs; also to Herr J. Berger for positions from Theorie und Praxis der Endspiele.
[N OTE .- Part I. of this work was some time back published under the title F IFTY P AWN P UZZLES , by the British Chess Company, and has met with warm approval. Amongst other laudatory notices, the Morning Post says of F IFTY P AWN P UZZLES : An ingenious little work, the study of which should lead to a considerable degree of proficiency in end games. ]
PART I.

PAWN ENDINGS.

No. 1.
White to move and win.

No. 2.
White to move; Black to draw.
No. 3.
Black to move; White to win.

No. 4.
White to move and win.
No. 5.
Black to move; White to win.

No. 6.
White to move and mate in two.

No. 7.
White to move and win.
No. 8.
Black to move and draw.

No. 9.
White to move; Black to draw.

No. 10.
White to play and win.

No. 11.
White to move and mate in three.

No. 12.
White to move; Black to dra