Chess

It’s probably the best strategy game.

Rules are simple, there are 9 different figures, each of them is allowed simple movements. The objective of the game is even easier, just take your opponents king for victory.

Movements have changed over time, it seems chess originated in Asia and moved into Europe through arabs in Al-Andalus.

One of the earliest books is known as “Libro de los Juegos” (Book of Games, s XIII) kept in the library of the monastery os San Lorenzo del escorial.

Modern rules were finished only at the end of the 19th century but most of them date from XV century.

At the end of the 20th century the introduction of computers opened a new world for chess, it “soon” became clear computers would overtake humans playing. It also helped humans to improve theory (end game specially) and we probably play now better chess than ever in history thanks to computers.

I’d say the best chess players around the world now stand only a 50% chance of beating a 10£ computer program running in a standard PC.

In this section we will post chess problems for resolution, I’d advice users to send me the solution (or just write them down) to allow other readers to try out the problems. Every fortnight solutions will be published.

Problem 1: White to play and win (difficulty low)