Best Chess Set: Harry Potter And Wizard Chess

The game of chess and specific chess set pieces have featured in many examples of literature in the past. One of the most memorable uses of the game has been in the Harry Potter books and films.

 

Wizard Chess was invented by the author J.K. Rowling as a form of chess where the chess set pieces move of their own accord when commanded by the player. The rules are otherwise the same as the 'muggle' or non-magic human game.

 

Initially we see Harry playing with a borrowed chess set, which takes pity on his inexperience. Harry then gets his own chess set at Christmas.

 

Interestingly, the chess pieces used are based on the famous Isle of Lewis chess set dating from the Middle Ages and now displayed jointly in the British Museum and the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

 

Perhaps the most dramatic display of Wizards Chess in the Harry Potter series is in the Philosophers Stone when Harry, Hermione and Ron have to play as chess set pieces to get to the Philosophers Stone itself. The game is that much more interesting as the pieces are destroyed when they are taken.

 

Perhaps it's just as well the game we all play is not so violent but it is enthralling nonetheless.

   

You can see a video of that dramatic game of Wizards chess here.  

Looking to find the best chess set for your needs or as a gift that will never be forgotten? Visit ChessSetHeaven.com for a range of high quality themed chess sets that will suit you perfectly.

Chess Set Pieces: Winning The World Championship

 

 

 

How many of us have moved our chess set pieces in a game at home and dreamed of becoming a top player?

 

Here is an interesting video from Russian Ladies World Chess Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk on winning the 2008 world chess championship.

 

 

Alexandra's blog can be found at http://chessqueen.com.

Looking to find the best chess set for your needs or as a gift that will never be forgotten? Visit ChessSetHeaven.com for a range of high quality themed chess sets that will suit you perfectly and will make you feel like a champion.

Chess Set Pieces: The Story Of The Rook

The 'Castle' or 'Rook' has been one of the chess set pieces since the earliest records of the game some 1500 years ago during the Gupta Empire in India.

 

The game was called Chaturanga (in Sanskrit) and the rook was first known as 'rukh' in Arabic.

 

Initially the rook was shown as a war carriage, which was an important constituent in the ancient Indian army. This representation of the rook chess set pieces was retained when the game was taken up in Arabia. The Arab name for this piece and the later Oriental names of 'xiangqi' and 'shoji' all mean 'chariot.'

 

The reason for the modern rook being universally shown as a turret is interesting. The war chariots in Persia were armored with a driver and an archer and were often designed to look like a turreted building to add to the impact on the battlefield.

 

In 1527 Vida, the Bishop of Albay (now in the Philippines), wrote a poem about chess and represented the rook with fortified platforms on the back of elephants. As the game moved westwards and elephants were less known, the rook chess set pieces dropped the elephant and just showed a crenellated fortification.

 

The rook became wholly connected to the idea of a tower as time progressed. Indeed, it is known as 'torre' in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, 'toren' in Dutch, 'turm' in German and 'tour' in French: all meaning 'tower.' In English of course the piece is also known as the 'castle.'

 

Such an ancient game as chess was bound to have a fascinating history and the history of chess set pieces is also as interesting. Next time you play a game of chess, you might reflect on how the pieces developed.

Looking to find the best chess set for your needs or as a gift that will never be forgotten? 
Visit ChessSetHeaven.com for a range of high quality themed chess sets that will suit you perfectly.

Chess Sets Online: Choose A Chess Set With Care

The game of chess is enthralling and teaches us so much about strategy and mental endurance but do you ever think about the chess set pieces with which you are playing?

 

Choosing the best chess set for your needs is probably more important than you realize.

 

Do you want an uninteresting chess set that is purely for playing the game of would you prefer a carved chess set depicting a period of history or perhaps your favorite literary characters?

 

Chess sets come in so many shapes and sizes so it is easy to get one that means something to you. Personally I love chess pieces that feel great in your hand and are beautifully carved: in short, a good chess set feels and looks great.

 

Heavy chess pieces somehow add something to the game of chess too. Lifting a nicely weighted rook or bishop feels more deliberate and special - try it and you will see what I mean.

 

Carefully carved chess pieces make a great conversation piece in the corner of a room, particularly if they are colorfully hand painted ones too! Each one is a work of art in it's own right and it is said that centuries ago individual chess pieces were indeed valued as ornaments in their own right.

 

What a great gift a chess set would make to someone this Christmas or for a birthday, especially if the theme of the set is something the recipient loves. Perhaps give a Sherlock Holmes themed set to a lover of those books or a set of Isle of Lewis chessmen to a history nut. The possibilities are virtually endless.

 

To find a range of beautifully carved and painted chess set pieces that will suit many tastes, why not visit ChessSetHeaven.com? 

Chess Store: Win At Chess With These Special Moves

By Lee Dobbins, http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lee_Dobbins

The game of chess has many interesting moves and some that can only happen under certain circumstances. In order to play the best game you can, it is wise to know about all the moves so that you can best outwit your opponent.

In order to effectively talk about chess a special method of notation has been devised. This helps identify the squares and positions without having to have a board and pieces always in front of you to illustrate. In this notation the columns (or files as they are called in chess) are identified with a letter and the rows (or ranks) are identified with a number. If you are looking at a chessboard from the perspective of the white player, the leftmost file is 'a', the one next to it 'b' and so on until the last file which is 'h'. The back or closest rank for white is 'rank 1', the next one (the one the pawns are on) is 'rank 2' and so on until the last rank, which is the back row for black and is 'rank 8'. So the when using chess notation, the leftmost back square for white would be called 'a1', the square directly above 'a2' an so on. See how easy that is?

Now that you know how chess notation works and you have a chess board visualized in your head, we can talk about some of the special chess moves.

En Passant

If you have played even only 1 game of chess you know that pawns have some special rules. For example, they can only capture a piece that is placed diagonally in front of them. Also, on it's initial move, a pawn can move up two squares instead of just one. However, there is a special case for this - if an enemy pawn could have captured it had it only moved 1 square, the enemy is still able to capture.
This move is called 'en passant' and can only be used on the very next move after the pawn is advanced 2 spaces - if you do not capture then, you cannot do it at a later move.

Here's an example - BLACK has a pawn at d4; WHITE moves his e2-pawn to e4; had WHITE moved to e3m the BLACK d4 pawn would have been able to capture so now he can capture en-passant on his next move. But if BLACK decides to make another move instead, he gives up his right to capture.

Castling

The King can make a special chess move called 'castling' and it is, in fact, recommended that you do this during the opening phase of the game. This is a defensive move which increase thesafety of the King. Castling has two forms - 'short' and 'long'. Here's how it works:

Say the white King is on e1 with the white Rook on h1 (this is the initial setup at the start of the game). You can make the move called short castling by moving the King to g1 and the Rook to f1. This move does have some restrictions - the squares in between the Rook and King must be empty, neither the Kind or Rook can have been moved before and the King cannot be in check. Note that even though you move two pieces, this is considered to be one move.

Long castling has the same rules and is a similar move but uses the Rook on the a file instead. In this scenario, the King ends on c1 and the Rook ends on d1.

Promotion

You might think the pawns are not very useful but if you can get your pawn to the other side of the board he can be promoted. This means the you can replace the pawn with any same colored piece you want with the exception of a king or pawn. Needless to say most people choose to replace the pawn with a queen.

There are some other situations in chess that novice players might not be aware of. For instance, a game can very easily end in a draw. This can happen when neither side has enough material to checkmate the opponent. This would happen if one player had a Bishop and King while another had only a King - no matter how many times you try you cannot get the opponent into checkmate so the game ends in a draw.

The chess game might also end in a draw if you have to repeat the same move 3 times as their are no other choices, if no advance or pawn capture has happened in the last 50 moves or stalemate. Stalemate can happen when a player who is not in check has no valid moves. If a player can continuously checkmate another player any time he wishes then he can claim a draw by "continuous check".

Lee Dobbins writes for many online publications. Visit http://www.chess-moves.info to learn more about the game of chess and see this article in more detail and with diagrams of the special moves.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lee_Dobbins

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Looking to find the best chess set for your needs or as a gift that will never be forgotten? Visit ChessSetHeaven.com for a range of high quality themed chess sets that will suit you perfectly.

Chess Set Pieces: The Pawn

Of the chess set pieces the pawn is the most numerous and frequently the most uninteresting, even in a good carved chess set.

Interestingly, the pawn has always been seen as the infantry among the pieces. In medieval times this was often translated into seeing the piece as the ordinary man; this is hardly surprising as at that time the infantry of an army were often armed peasants fulfilling their obligation to their feudal lord. Even the earliest forms of chess refer to this piece as the 'foot-soldier.' 'Padati' in the original Sanskrit literally translates this way and was the earliest name for the pawn.

Of course the pawn is the only one of the chess set pieces that cannot move backward but, and here the game of chess proves itself to be a meritocracy, it can make it to the far side of the board and be promoted. The player can then choose the new rank of the pawn, be it queen, rook, bishop or knight. Obviously a promoted pawn cannot become a king, nor would it be wise to do so. The promotion is termed 'queening' as the choice is usually to promote the piece to a queen. The promotion is not limited to a piece already taken by the opponent and it is not widely understood that, in theory at least, it is possible for a player to have as many as ten knights, ten bishops, ten rooks or even nine queens in play at any one time.

The pawn has always been among the chess set pieces, even as far back as the game's origins in India some 1500 years ago. Medieval chess players even gave each individual pawn a profession: each one became a gambler, a city guard/policeman, an innkeeper, merchant, doctor, weaver/ clerk, worker, farmer or a blacksmith. The position of each one related to the major piece behind - for example, the blacksmith and the city guard or policeman were in front of the knight as they were overseen by knights in real life.

The German name for the pawn is 'Bauer' or peasant and the French refer to it as 'Pion:' this was corrupted to form our present 'Pawn.'

Interestingly, the piece has had philosophical connotations and it is the only chess piece that lends its name to a life situation. In the English language to be a pawn is to be someone manipulated by a stronger person or power: an unimportant subordinate or agent.

To many who play chess, the pieces may seem to be play things but, as the pawn shows us, there is a great deal more depth and history to the game.

To find quality chess set pieces that reflect the rich history of the game, visit ChessSetHeaven.com.

Chess Sets Online: The Long History Of Chess

 

 

In the novel Through The Looking Glass, the author, Lewis Carroll, depicts much of his heroine's adventures taking place in a dream world based on chess set pieces. This story, published in 1871, reflects the interest in the game of chess that has existed for hundreds of years. This has led not only to many people being motivated to buy chess sets but also a fascination with the game, it's strategies and traditions.

 

Some research indicates a version of chess may have existed in China in the second century AD but the first records of the game exist in India where the game was played prior to the sixth century. From here, the game seemed to have spread to Persia and then across the Muslim world before reaching Europe. The game was originally known as 'chaturanga' in India and the chess set pieces were divided into four military divisions: cavalry, elephantry, chariotry and infantry. These four divisions became the knight, rook, bishop and pawn in the modern game.

 

Chess was mentioned in a Persian poem written in the seventh century and in several subsequent poems and essays soon after. Known as Shatrang, the game had mystical connotations in India and Persia at this time.

 

It is sobering to understand just how global the game of chess really is: it has individual names in most languages, including Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Latin, Catalan, Italian, French, Dutch, Mongol and Arabic. It was carried across the known world into Spain by the Moors and spread into the corners of Europe by the year 1000 and Buddhist pilgrims and Silk Road traders spread the game to the Far East. 

 

Interestingly, the chess set pieces were often individually prized as gifts and ornaments in their own right. The modern trend to buy a carved chess set as a present and room feature as well as part of a game to play seems to continue this tradition.

 

It seems likely the game of chess reached Britain with the Norman conquest of 1066 and, as in the rest of Europe, chess became a game associated with culture and nobility but as time moved on the intensity sometimes created by playing chess could create violence. This was a problem that seemed to worry the Church and in 1061 Saint Peter Damian even criticized the Bishop of Florence for playing chess. Perhaps inevitably the game became the focus of prize money and gambling during medieval times and as a result Louis IX of France banned gambling in 1254. Nonetheless the French people ignored him and continued to wager money on chess games.

 

It was at the start of the sixteenth century that chess began to assume it's modern form. Prior to that time, the rules varied and the chess set pieces could move in ways that would surprise us now. A Russian version gave the queen the ability to move like a knight.

 

Chess was played in the London coffee houses during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, indeed around 1840, as Britain formed it's vast empire, London became the focus of the growth of the game. The first organized chess tournament seems to have taken place in London in 1851 and the winner was a German professor of Mathematics, Adolf Andersson. By 1990 there were more than one thousand international tournaments.

 

Russian chess players tend to dominate the game but that is not surprising when you consider chess is the national sport of that country, where it is more popular than football.

 

Whole books have been written about the history of the game of chess and indeed about the individual pieces and the stories and variations of the game are many and fascinating. Whenever you buy a chess set and pick up one of the chess set pieces, it is very easy to feel a connection to all those people throughout history who have done the same thing.

  

Looking to find the best chess set for your needs or as a gift that will never be forgotten? Visit ChessSetHeaven.com for a range of high quality themed chess sets that will suit you perfectly.