IMPORTANT CHESS COMPETITIONS
- World Chess Championship
- World Chess Solving Championship
- World Junior Chess Championship
- European Individual Championship
- National Chess Championships
- Spain's Linares chess tournament
- Monte Carlo's Melody Amber tournament
- Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting
- Wijk aan Zee's Corus chess tournament
ORIGIN OF CHESSTERMS
Checkmate: This is the English rendition of
shah mat, which is Persian for "the king is finished".
Rook: From Sanskrit Rath which means "chariot",
or Persian rukh which means "chariot" or "cheek"
(part of the face). The piece resembles a siege tower. It is also
believed to be named after the mythical Persian bird of great power
called the roc. In India, the piece is more popularly called haathi,
which means "elephant".
Bishop: From the Persian pil ("the
elephant"), but in Europe and the western part of the Islamic world
people knew little or nothing about elephants (curiously, in Russia this
piece is called slon, which is Russian for "elephant"). The
name of the chessman entered Western Europe as Latin alfinus, a
meaningless word that then evolved further (in Spanish, for example, it
evolved to the name "alfil"); alfil is actually Arabic for "the
elephant", where al means "the" and fil means "elephant".
The Spanish word would most certainly have been taken from the Islamic
provinces of Spain. The English name "bishop" is inspired by
the conventional shape of the piece originally intended as the tusk of
an elephant but which also looks like the mitre of a bishop.
Queen: Persian farzin ("vizier")
became Arabic firzan, which entered western European languages in such
forms as alfferza and fers, but was later replaced by "queen".
"Fers" persists as a commonly-used alternate name for the
piece in Russia.