Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. Chess is played by millions of people worldwide, both amateurs and professionals.

Each player begins the game with 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. Each of the six piece types moves differently. The most powerful piece is the queen and the least powerful piece is the pawn. 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.

Chess is believed to have originated in India, some time before the 7th century; the Indian game of chaturanga is also the likely ancestor of xiangqi and shogi. The pieces took on their current powers in Spain in the late 15th century; the rules were finally standardized in the 19th century.

Chess annotation symbols

When annotating chess games, commentators frequently use widely recognized annotation symbols. Question marks and exclamation points that denote a move as bad or good are ubiquitous in chess literature. Some publications intended for an international audience, such as the Chess Informant have a wide range of additional symbols that transcend language barriers.

The common symbols for evaluating the merits of a move are "??", "?", "?!", "!?", "!", and "!!". In these cases, the corresponding symbol is juxtaposed in the text immediately after the move (e.g. Re7? or Kh1!?, see algebraic chess notation).

Use of these annotation symbols is subjective, as different annotators use the same symbols differently. Moreover, an annotator's use of symbols is often influenced by the player's strength: a positional misjudgment that an annotator might give a "??" if played by a strong grandmaster might pass unremarked if played by a beginner.

Annotators' use of punctuation also may possibly be influenced by the result of the game (regardless of the actual quality of the move); one possible example came in the 11th game of the 1972 World Championship, when Spassky played an unexpected move, 14.Nb1, retreating the knight to its initial square. Spassky won the game, and several annotators gave the move two exclamation points. Edmar Mednis asserted that if Spassky had lost the game, the move would likely have been given two question marks instead.

Chess (Northwestern University)

Chess was a pioneering chess program from the 1970s, written by Larry Atkin and David Slate at Northwestern University. Chess ran on Control Data Corporation's line of supercomputers. Work on the program began in 1968. It dominated the first computer chess tournaments, such as the World Computer Chess Championship and ACM's North American Computer Chess Championship. Chess was the first published use of the bitboard data structure applied to the game of chess.

In 1976, Chess 4.5 won the Class B section of the Paul Masson American Chess Championship, the first time a computer was successful in a human tournament. The performance rating was 1950.

In February 1977 Chess 4.6, the only computer entry, surprised observers by winning the 84th Minnesota Open against competitors just under Master level. It achieved a USCF rating close to or at Expert, higher than previous programs' Class C or D, by winning five games and losing none. Stenberg (rated 1969) became the second Class A player to lose to a computer in a tournament game, the first being Jola.

Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language.

Definition and usage

Vocabulary is commonly defined as "all the words known and used by a particular person".Knowing a word, however, is not as simple as merely being able to recognize or use it. There are several aspects of word knowledge that are used to measure word knowledge.

Productive and receptive

The first major distinction that must be made when evaluating word knowledge is whether the knowledge is productive (also called achieve) or receptive (also called receive); even within those opposing categories, there is often no clear distinction. Words that are generally understood when heard or read or seen constitute a person's receptive vocabulary. These words may range from well-known to barely known (see degree of knowledge below). A person's receptive vocabulary is the larger of the two. For example, although a young child may not yet be able to speak, write, or sign, he or she may be able to follow simple commands and appear to understand a good portion of the language to which he or she is exposed. In this case, the child's receptive vocabulary is likely tens, if not hundreds of words, but his or her active vocabulary is zero. When that child learns to speak or sign, however, the child's active vocabulary begins to increase. It is also possible for the productive vocabulary to be larger than the receptive vocabulary, for example in a second-language learner who has learned words through study rather than exposure, and can produce them, but has difficulty recognizing them in conversation.

Vocabulary (album)

Vocabulary is the debut album of British new wave group Europeans. It was released on LP in September 1983; no CD version is available yet.

Track listing

All tracks written by Dugmore/Harper/Hogarth/Woore.

Personnel

External links