Chess articles on history, computer chess and correspondence play

Chess history: world champions, grandmasters and the stories around them

The chess history articles on this site start with people and rules. Mikhail Botvinnik and the politics around the Soviet school, the Latvian master Israel Zilber, David Levy and his ten-year bet against computer programs, the Mind Sports Olympiad and the Ballard anti-draw scoring system each get a page, and every claim on those pages is tied to a named source. A good piece of chess history keeps documented facts apart from stories that were only repeated for decades, and says which is which.

Where the sources disagree, the article says so. A date given in one reference and a different date in another appear side by side with their origins, and a detail that no reference confirms is left out. Grandmasters who wrote about their own games are read next to the people who analysed those games later, so a reader can see where the accounts agree and where they part ways.

Computer chess: engines, tablebases and the machines before them

Computer chess is covered from two ends. One end is the hardware that reached living rooms in the late 1970s, such as the Fidelity Chess Challenger, with model lists by year and pointers to where the manuals are held. The other is the software side: how an opening book is stored, what a tablebase knows about endgames, and why a file with the extension .ctg is an opening book and not a game.

These computer chess articles explain terms in plain language and link each one to a short glossary entry. Handheld chess computers are described by what they are and how they differ, not ranked by tests that were never run, and a figure without a source is left out.

Correspondence chess: how email games and slow play work

Correspondence chess means games played over days or weeks, once by post and now mostly by email or a game server. The correspondence chess guide covers the basics: how a game is organised, what the usual time allowances look like, how the governing body sets its rules and what a newcomer needs to join an event.

Rules differ between organisers, especially on which tools are allowed during a game, so the guide names the rule set it describes instead of speaking for all of them.

How the chess articles are sourced

Every one of these chess articles ends with the list of sources it was written from, and names the edition or page when a book or a rulebook is cited. Model names, dates and rule details come from primary documents where they exist. When only secondary sources could be found, the article says so in the text.

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