Echesspedia

PAIRING

A listing of who plays whom in a tournament. Pairing charts are posted before each round and also indicate which board number each player is to play on, and which color of the pieces they will have (white or black).

PALMÈDE, La

A French magazine founded in 1836 by La Bourdonnais. It was the first magazine with chess as a regular feature. The magazine stopped in 1839 when La Bourdonnais was forced to retire due to ill health but was revived two years later by Saint-Amant and J. Mery until 1847.

The Palamedes was an ancient Greek Prince to whom is attributed numerous inventions including the game Petteia, thought by some to be a precursor of chess.
In 1864 another periodical named Le Palamède Français edited by P. Journod lasted for few months.

PAO

A fairy chess piece invented by Dawson that moves like a rook except to capture a piece, it must jump over it and land on any square that was in its path.

PARRY CHECK

To interpose a man between the checking piece and the attacking king.

PASSED PAWN

A pawn that is not opposed by an enemy pawn either on its own file or adjacent files.

PASSIVE MOVE

A defensive or a move which has no threats.

PATZER
From the German verb patzen (to blunder), the name given to a weak player.

PAWN

The pawn may move forward to the unoccupied square immediately in front of it on the same file, or on its first move, the pawn may move as in (a) alternatively it may advance two squares along the same file provided both squares are unoccupied, or (b) the pawn may move to a square occupied by an opponent’s piece, which is diagonally in front of it on an adjacent file, capturing that piece.

A pawn attacking a square crossed by an opponent’s pawn which has advanced two squares in one move from its original square may capture this opponent’s pawn as though the latter had been moved only one square. This capture is only legal on the move following this advance, and is called an ‘en passant’ capture.

When a pawn reaches the rank furthest from its starting position, it must be exchanged as part of the same move for a new queen, rook, bishop or knight of the same colour. The player’s choice is not restricted to pieces that have been captured previously. This exchange of a pawn for another piece is called ‘promotion’, and the effect of the new piece is immediate.

PEARL of Zandvoort

The name given to the twenty-sixth game, a Dutch Defence, played in the World Championship by Max Euwe-Alexander Alekhine in 1935. Euwe won the game in 47 moves, which virtually decided the match.

PERFECT SCORE

In the match Steinitz-Mongredien 1863 7-0; Steinitz-Blackburne 1876 7-0; Lasker (at odds) – Ettlinger 1893 7-0, Fischer-Taimanov 1971 6-0; Fischer- Larsen 1971 6-0; Alekhine-von Bardeleben 1907 5-0; Capablanca –Kostich 5-0 1919 (BCM 1958/102)

In tournament: Lasker won at New York 1893 13-0-0; Capablanca at New York 1910 7-0-0, Capablanca at New York 1913 13-0-0, Capablanca at New York 1914 11-0-0, Lombardy World Junior Toronto 1958 11-0-0, M. Gurevich Belgium Championship 11-0-0 in 2001, Alekhine Caracas 1939 10-0-0.

PHILODORIAN, The

The first English magazine, founded in 1837 by G. Walker, was devoted to chess and other scientific games. Had only six numbers (December to May) and disappeared the following year. The content was mainly chess but also contained material on whist, ecarte and Polish draughts.

PIECE

The earliest European chess pieces are adorned neither with crowns nor with crosses. The Burint piece is certainly not a queen, which revolutionised the game when it was introduced by an unknown genius in the late fifteenth century.

The oldest known European pieces belong to the Venafro set, named after the central Italian town where they were discovered in a Roman tomb in 1932. The pieces, made of bone topped with ivory, are from the late tenth century and are housed in the Archaeological Museum of Naples.

Another early European set is the Charlemagne set, made of elephant ivory. Probably made near Naples, Italy, this set dates from the late eleventh century. The 16 surviving pieces are housed at the National Library, Paris. Others were lost during the French Revolution.

The best known medieval pieces belong to the Lewis set. They were discovered in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, northwest Scotland. The pieces, dated from the mid-twelfth century, were carved mostly from walrus tusk, with a few from whale teeth. Coming from at least four different sets, they are now in the British Museum, London, and the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.

PIECE TOUCHE
(game Steiner-Colle) Budapest 1926 5BCM 1955/333

PIN

A situation when a piece or a pawn cannot or is forbidden to move because it could expose the king for an attack or would expose a more valuable piece behind it to capture.

In the following example Qa3 and Re7 are pinned.

PLUS SCORE

A term used by chess players to say that they scored more than 50%.

PLY
The measure of search depth in computer chess. A computer program which evaluates no further than its own legal moves plus the legal responses to those moves is searching to a depth of two-ply. The greater the search depth, the stronger the computer plays chess.

POISONED PAWN

A line in the Najdorf variation of the Sicilian defence. (B97) practised many times by Fischer. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6 8.Qd2 Qxb2.

A line in the Winawer variation of the French Defence (C19). 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.Qg4

PORTABLE GAME NOTATION (PGN)

Chess games stored in a cross-platform software format (.pgn) which may be read by all major chess database programs. A text file composed exclusively of PGN data records should have a file name with “.pgn” as the suffix.

[Event "XXI Magistral Ciudad de Leon"]

[Site "Leon ESP"]

[Date "2008.06.01"]

[EventDate "2008.06.01"]

[Round "4"]

[Result "1-0"]

[White "Vassily Ivanchuk"]

[Black "Viswanathan Anand"]

[ECO "E55"]

[WhiteElo "2740"]

[BlackElo "2803"]

[PlyCount "31"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e3 O-O 5. Bd3 d5 6. Nf3 c5

7. O-O dxc4 8. Bxc4 Nbd7 9. Qe2 cxd4 10. exd4 b6 11. d5 Nc5

12. Rd1 Qe8 13. Nb5 exd5 14. Nc7 Qe4 15. Rd4 Qg6 16. Nh4 1-0

PORZ

A German chess club situated in a suburb of Cologne which has a tremendous palmares in Bundesliga and in a German Club Cup. It won the national title in 1969, 1979, 1981-82, 1983-84, 1993-94, 1995-96, 1997-98, 1998-99, 1999-2000 and 2003-04. Also the team won eight times the German Cup. In 2005 the team, which included Michael Adams ENG 2740, Christopher Lutz GER 2596, Loek van Wely NED 2681, Ivan Sokolov NED 2663, Rafael Vaganian ARM, Alexander Beliavsky SLO 2660, Alexander Graf GER 2646, Mikhail Gurevich BEL 2644, Curt Hansen DEN 2633 and several other Grandmasters, had a rating average of 2653 with a budget of 100,000 Euros.

POST MORTEM Analyse

Analysis of a game shortly after its conclusion, usually done by the players themselves.

PRAGUE AGREEMENT

In 2002 Bessel Kok organised a meeting between FIDE, Kramnik, the Braingame champion and Kasparov the highest ELO which to settle the world championship’s schism created with the breakaway of Kasparov in 1993 was organised in Prague. The idea was to reunite both world champions into a final match which was supposed to be held in 2005. The deal collapsed after FIDE could not find any venue for the match Kasimzhanov, FIDE World Champion and Kasparov and therefore the winner could not meet V. Kramnik who beat P. Leko in October 2004. Eventually the schism was settled in 2006 with the victory of Kramnik over Topalov.

PRIZE FUND

At the highest level the lowest was probably ₤5 for Morphy for his match against Harrwitz and Anderssen both in 1858 and $5,000,000 sponsored by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov for the World Championship Tournament organised in 1997.

PROBLEM

Chess composition magazine. Was published at Zagreb as a body of the Chess Union of Yugoslavian Composers, since 1958 of the Permanent Commission in Chess Compositions. Main editor was N.Petrovich. There were 210 issues published in the period of 1951-81. Articles in different languages devoted to the theory and history of the chess compositions, creativity of chess composers, comments on chess works, and official materials of the Permanent Commission of FIDE were published in this magazine.

PROBLEEMBLAD

A magazine of chess composition, a body of the Dutch Union of the Chess Problems Friends- Nederlandse Bond van Problemvrienden, issued since 1944 – once in two months. The editor was Nanning in the period of 1944-56, Visserman 1957-70, Grand 1971-77, and Visben 1978-.

PROMOTION

When a pawn reaches the last rank on the opposite side of the board, it is replaced with either a queen, rook, bishop or knight. The piece a pawn is promoted to does not need to be one previously captured, so there may be two or more queens of the same colour on the board at one time, or three knights, etc. The queen is most often used when promoting, since it is the most powerful piece.

PROPHYLAXIS

The term first used in the context of chess by Aron Nimzowitsch; it is the critical process of anticipating one’s opponent’s intentions and taking steps to thwart his/her plan. The World Champions Tigran Petrosian and Anatoly Karpov have been well known for their prophylactic styles of play.

THE PROBLEMIST

A magazine of chess compositions, the body of “The British Chess Problem Society”, has been published since 1926 in London, once in two months. The editor has been P.Valua since 1981.

PROHIBITION CHESS

This is a variant of the game in which no check is allowed except in the giving of checkmate.