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ers-draughts.htm (cited July 2008); Martin Fierz, A Brief History of Computer Checkers, www.fierz.ch/history .htm (cited July 2008); Martin Fierz, Checkers, www. fierz.ch/checkers.htm (cited June 2008); Neto, Joao Pedro, The Checkers Family, The World of Abstract Games, homepages.di.fc.ul.pt/~jpn/gv/checkers.htm (cited July 2008); Online Museum of Checkers History, Promoting the Future of Checkers, by Glorifying its Past, www .online-museum-of-checkers-history.com/ (cited July 2008); Usacheckers.com, World Championship Results, www .usacheckers.com/worldchampionshipresults.php (cited July 2008); World Checkers Draughts Federation, wcdf.wz.cz /index.htm (cited July 2008). John Barnhill Independent Scholar

database in 2001, as did Martin Fierz, and Schaeffer released the eight-piece database in 2002. In late 2007, one book contained 1,869,199 moves. Also in 2007, a 10-piece endgame book was available for purchase. Modern Computer Programs Modern programs can show every possible combination of moves when eight pieces are left on the board (some say the programs can do this at 10 pieces); the result is that computer Checkers is more a game of database searching than of strategy. The programs consistently play the best Checkers players to a draw and sometimes defeat them. The game remains popular worldwide and provides training in logic and thinking, as well as providing a great deal of fun. Although some people regard Checkers as a simple game for old men and small children, estimates of the number of possible positions reach 500 quintillion. Expert players can spend years mastering play, developing favorite strategies for both defense and attack. They study long series of forced jumps, known as strokes, that have attained classic status. Famous strokes include the Boomerang, Wyllies Switcher Winder, and the Goose Walk. The Canalejas Cannonball strategy is 350 years old and still can end a game in only five moves. Checkers is a worldwide game with local variations in rules, board, and pieces, but the same basics. A sign of the popularity of Checkers and the seriousness with which players regard it is the development of the online Checkers history museum, started as a means of preserving images lost in the fire at the Petal, Missouri, International Checker Hall of Fame in 2007. The World of Checkers Museum is in Dubuque, Iowa, and the American competitive Checkers organization posts online news of tournaments, as well as rankings, transcripts of championship matches, and educational material about the game and how to become more proficient at it.
See Also: Chess and Variations of; France; Play as Competition, Psychology of; Play as Competition, Sociology of; United States, 1860 to 1876; United States, 1900 to 1930; United States, 1930 to 1960; United States, 1960 to Present. Bibliography. Robbie Bell and Michael Cornelius, Board Games Round the World: A Resource Book for Mathematical Investigations (Cambridge University Press, 1988); College Sports Scholarships, A Brief History and How to Play Checkers, www.collegesportsscholarships.com/check

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Chess has always been a fascinating game. It has a long history, with roots in ancient India. Besides the game in practice, there is a long history of literature recording past developments and tactics. Furthermore, this game has been an interesting object of theoretical speculations in psychology, sociology, linguistics, semiotics, and philosophy. It is known as the game of the kings and is not a game of chance. This led to its identification with intelligence in early computer science, whereas modern literature has shown that its self-referential logic is linked to insanity. More prominently, Chess is present as a symbol in fine arts and cinema. For these reasons, Chess could perhaps be the greatest game created by humankind. Origins As with every other creation, Chess gives the impression of having had an inventor, as in myths in which a god creates languages or other cultural artifacts. The first known tale about Chesss creation is found in a Muslim legend that dates back to pre-Muhammadan days, according to the historian Murray. It reports the history of Qaflan, a Persian philosopher who was asked by the Queen Husiya, daughter of Balhait, to invent war without bloodshed. The philosopher asked the Queen to give him a gift in grains of corn upon the squares of the chessboard. On the first square one grain, on the second two, on the third

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square double of that on the second, and in the same way until the last square. The total of the geometrical progression is 264-1, or 18,446,744,073,709,551,615a quantity that would cover England to a uniform depth of 38.4 feet in grains of corn. Poets never ceased to write legends about Chess: in 1763 Sir William Jones wrote a poem on Caissa, the nymph who was the means of teaching Chess to mankind. Legends apart, Chatrang Namak (8th century b.c.e.) is the first written source explaining Chess rules and attributing its origins to India. Earlier sanskrit sources refer to Chaturanga (four angles), an early Chess ancestor in which four armies battle on a chessboard. Archaeological findings like the Butrint King (465 b.c.e.) are often uncertain. Because of their differential value, we need at least two figures to identify them as Chess pieces. Linguistic data are more interesting; the evolution of the term Chaturanga led to Persian Chatrang and Muslim Shatranj. The etymology of English term Rook is related to Sanskrit term Ratha, meaning chariot. War chariots were used in Indo-European armies before they learned how to ride (as described in epic poems like the Iliad). Chess history can be useful in reconstructing ancient Indo-European institutions. Starting from India, lexical data let us reconstruct how Chess spread across Asia to the Malay Islands, China, and Japan, starting new variants. The history of the term queen is interesting in understanding how Chess arrived in Europe. The piece was, in Sanskrit, the mantrin, meaning the Rajas minister. The term was translated to Persian farzin, then became the arabian firzan or firz, meaning a vizier. This explains the Italian term fersa, which in the Middle Ages designated the piece we call the Queen. The term led to the French vierge (virgin). The feminization of the Indian piece minister was complete, and explains the modern Italian donna (woman). In Spanish and in English the vierge became a Queen, probably because of its position next to the King. Another explanation could be the political importance of Renaissance queens. The term remains ferz in Russian, thus indicating a possible second Chess route from Persia to Europe. A confirmation comes from slon, the Russian term for the bishop, which means elephant; like the Sanskrit hasti, persian pil, and Arabian al-fil (the elephant). The term became alfil in Spanish, in Italian alfiere (meaning ensign), and in French fou, meaning joker. The same linguistic data would seem to exclude an origin from the Byzantine game Zatrikion, which is similar to Chess. The

link between the two routes has been found in Poland, where both European and Russian terms are present in Renaissance Chess, as in Jan Kochanowskis poem Szachi. Other hypotheses on Chesss relation with ancient Latin games, like the Latrunculorum Ludus, are neither proved clearly by archaeological findings nor supported by linguistic data. Evolution From Chaturanga to contemporary Chess, rules have different variants in relation to their geographical and historical development. In the Middle Ages, the old rules inherited from the Muslim world coexisted with modern innovations in codexes like the Bonus Socius (8th century). These codexes report a rich collection of Chess problems, often for gambling purposes. Some of them are classified as Partito a la rabiosa, referring to the modern movement of the queen. Still, the Cracow Poem (1422) reports many unfamiliar rules about the kings and queens movement. Heterodox Chess, Chess variants, always coexisted with the official rules that represent just one of the ways in which the game evolved. We have heterodox chessboards, heterodox pieces like the Griffin and heterodox games like Kriegspiel. Nowadays, everyone can easily play old and new heterodox Chess, like Bobby Fischers game on the internet. Both the Catholic and the Orthodox churches condemned the game in the Middle Ages, thus proving the popularity of the game at that time. The Renaissance saw the standardization of rules across the European courts and international Chess activity began. Chess tractates developed Chess theory; in the 15th century, Juan Ramirez de Lucena wrote a treatise reporting both the old rules for the Queens movement (De Viejo) and the new ones (De dama). Portuguese player Damiano published his chessbook in Rome (1512). Chess players attained a cosmopolitan reputation and often international contests were organized. At the court of Philip II of Spain, the great Ruy Lopez was beaten by Paolo Boi of Syracuse. The Italian player Gioacchino Greco was so popular that he was invited to England, France, and Spain to exhibit his talents. A lot of contemporary knowledge, openings (the first moves), and theoretical ideas in national schools of thought and traditions originate from this period. Modern Chess In modern Chess, theoretical innovations are related to the names of the greatest players and to the cultural

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Chess and Variations of vention, and Arnold Schoenberg invented the new dodecaphonic musical grammar. In 1924, the World Chess Federation was founded, thus inheriting the experience of other informal organizations wiped out by World War I. At that time, the title of World Champion became formally recognized. Before that date, those considered world champions were Wilhelm Steinitz, from 1866 to 1894, Emanuel Lasker (champion 18941921), Jos Raul Capablanca (champion 192127), Aleksandr Alekhine (champion 192746, with a brief interruption by Max Euwe between 1935 and 1937). After World War II, Russian players Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, and Tigran Petrosyan took turns holding possession of the world title 195169. Boris Spassky obtained the title in 1969 and held it until 1972, when he lost the match to the American Bobby Fischer. This challenge inaugurated a new era in Chess and became a symbol of the United StatesRussia Cold War. The young Fischer refused to play against Anatoly Karpov in 1975, probably because of psychological pressure. Karpov represented Russia until 1985, when he was defeated by Garry Kasparov. After the end of the Cold War, Kasparov broke his relations with the World Chess Federation (FIDE) and created his own organization. The world title was reunified in 2006, when Vladimir Kramnik defeated World Chess Federation champion Veselin Topalov. In 2007 Kramnik lost the title, beaten by Indian champion Viswanathan Anand. Chess and Artificial Intelligence In the 20th century, Chess became an interesting topic of discussion in research fields such as information science, linguistics, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. Chess is central in the pioneering research of Alan Turing, who wrote the first Chess program in 1951. Because of the lack of computers, he tested the algorithm manually against a young researcher, Alick Glennie. The machine lost. In the second part of the century, the Russian world champion Botvinnik, an engineer, worked on heuristic Chess algorithms; nowadays, brute-force calculus is more employed by programmers, thanks to the great improvements in computer execution time. In 1997, the purpose-built Chess computer Deep Blue won a match against the world champion Garry Kasparov. More recently, a commercial software program defeated world champion Vladimir Kramnik. During the World Title Match between Kramnik and Topalov, Topalovs

Chess has been popular since the Middle Ages, even though both the Catholic and Orthodox churches condemned it.

glories of their nations. The greatest players spoke Spanish and Italian during the Renaissance, French between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, English and German at the turn of the 20th century, and Russian after World War II. As the great world champion Aleksandr Alekhine noticed, these movements are related to artistic and cultural movement too. Philidor, a French composer and Chess player, first analyzed the pawn chains according to 18th-century rationalism; players like Labourdonnais or Mac Donnell developed the impetuous Romantic style, exemplified in historical games like Anderssens Immortal or Evergreen. The positional school of Steinitz and Tarrasch posed some of the basis for modern Chess thinking and are related to Positivism; Aron Nimzowitsch, Richard Reti, and Aleksandr Alekhine developed the new hypermodern conception by reversing the value traditionally accorded to center occupation. In the same period, Picassos Cubism posed a new representational con-

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coaches accused Kramnik of using a small portable chessboard during game breaks. Both human and computer strength is measurable by the Elo scorethe international standard of evaluation. Elo points are attributed or subtracted to a players score in relation to opponents strength and game result (win, draw, loss), using a complex mathematical formula invented by the american master Arpad Elo. The current World Champion Anand has a score of 2,800 Elo points, whereas contemporary software reaches an incredible score of 3,000. Nevertheless, Chess engines are not close to imitating human Chess logic: human players construct long-term plans, trying by method to start the antagonist on the way to the position they aim toward. Computers simply calculate every possible move to a certain depth: Beyond their calculus horizon, they know nothing. Perspectives on Chess Meaning In Saussures work, Chess became a metaphor for the positional and differential conception of linguistic value. Hjelmslev developed the comparison with formalized languages like logic and mathematics. Chess became a model of meaning in early Structuralism. Even in the analytical tradition, Ludwig Wittgenstein was fascinated by the analogies between languages and Chess. He focused on rules; the failed attempt to reduce the rules of mathematics to ones of logic led the philosopher to consider the meaning of following the rules of different games in different situations. He argues that when one shows someone the king and says: this is the king, this does not tell him the use of this piece unless he already knows the rules. With this model, like both Hjelmslevs and Saussures, we are not capable of fully understanding how to choose between the possible strategies and plans permitted by the rules. A more suitable model can be found in Umberto Ecos works: According to him, in Chess, a given position conveys a series of optional moves, a set of possible responses, and a chain of foreseeable (or unforeseeable) solutions. The two players evaluations can be, and effectively are, sensibly different. Eco agrees with Charles Peirces pragmatic notion of meaning as conceivable consequences. The most important Chess philosopher was Emanuel Lasker. The World Chess Champion studied mathematics with David Hilbert and became a respected professor of mathematics at Heidelberg University. In his book Struggle, he developed many Chess ideas in his general

philosophy. He noticed how Chess shows an aesthetic effect: what the move says, expresses, discloses, and announcesit is that which excites and stirs the spectator. The spectator enjoys not a game of Chess but the history and drama of the game in which a chessboard is merely the stage and the pieces its actors. He discovered a meaningful relation between position, game rhythm, and passions, and conceived the match as psychological warfare. He used to study his opponents games in order to achieve a deep knowledge of their preferences about openings and game lines, thus discovering tactics psychologically disturbing to the enemy. In Alekhines example, if a player prefers a defense because of its strength and security, then when the same defense is used against him, he will feel in trouble. Laskers concept of psychology was related to Brentanos theories and as such are perhaps outdated. Psychoanalysis discovered an importance in Chess quite early on; in 1931 Ernest Jones presented to the British Psycho-Analytical Society a work on the great American champion Paul Morphy. In a Freudian perspective, Chess is the sublimation of both aggressive and homosexual impulses. The great Chess player and New York psychoanalyst Reuben Fine extended this point of view, analyzing the life of many modern Chess champions. He also trained the young champion Bobby Fischer. His psychoanalytic point of view is rather old-fashioned. In spite of this, he underlined the relationship between Chess and mental disease, present in the works of contemporary psychiatrists like Dextreit and Engel. However, contemporary cognitive psychology is more interested in the role of vision and memory with respect to Chess position, or in so-called intuition. Both psychological and sociological studies investigate the greatest champions careers or Chess expertise in children. The gender problem is a good matter of discussion; sources report that in the Middle Ages, aristocratic women used to play Chess. In spite of this, Chess became a traditionally male competition. Nowadays, women are often seen as weaker players than men, and a womens world tournament exists. Still, the Hungarian Chess grandmaster Judit Polgr, the only woman on FIDEs 2008 Top 100 players list, currently refuses to participate in womens contests. However, differences between men and women at playing Chess are not cognitive but cultural, such as the aggressive attitude of many players and the sexism of the traditional Chess training environment.

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Chess and Variations of Chess positions are often readable and testify to the games evolution. Chess is a typical theme in Still Life: In The Five Senses by Lubin Baugin (1630)chessmen enclosed in a Chess case are a symbol of the sense of touch. The theme also is present in contemporary still-life paintings, such as The Queen, by Audrey Flack (1976). Chess Players is another common theme in artists works, from Ludovico Carracci (1590, now in Berlin, Gemaldegalerie) to Honor Daumier (1865 Paris, Musee du Petit Palais). Contemporary artists are more interested in Chesss geometrical features than in their symbolic meaning. Chessboards were present in the art of Kandinsky after he adhered to the principles of Bauhaus; we can find the same use in Paul Klees Super Chess (1937). Avantgarde Chess sets were designed by both Man Ray and Yves Tanguy. Chess is a central path in the life and work of Marcel Duchamp, who was also a strong Chess player and a member of the French Olympic Chess team, captained by Alekhine. More recently, David Pelham created a minimalist acrylic Chess set in 1970; Cy Enfield created a commemorative Chess set for the occasion of the FischerSpassky match. However, Chess set design exists in every culture, from the abstract geometrical Muslim tradition to the realistic representation of middle age warfare in the Lewis Chess set (12th century), depicting Viking warriors, and the so-called Charlemagne set (11th century), probably realized in Amalphi. Cinema Like in figurative arts, Chess was also present in the origins of cinema: A Chess Dispute by Robert W. Paul dates back to 1903. Chess characterizes both the avant-garde, like the Expressionistic Das Wachsfigurenkabinett, by Paul Leni, in 1924, and in commercial films such as The Lodger by Alfred Hitchcock (1927), or The Smiling Lieutenant by Ernst Lubitsch (1931). In this period, Chess Fever by Vsevolod Pudovkin (1925) uses an avant-garde language to parody Chess obsession. The film also featured many Chess champions: Capablanca, Grnfeld, Marshall, Reti, Spielmann, Torre, and Yates. A possible explanation for the presence of Chess in films could be that many famous actors and directors were known Chess addicts. For example, Humphrey Bogart is represented alone while studying a Chess position in Curtizs Casablanca. Similarly, Stanley Kubrick inserts a game between a human and a machine in his 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); the position came from a real game (Roesch-Willy Schlage, Hamburg 1910). We

Literature Since the Middle Ages, Chess has been present as a theme in many epic or courtly love poems, as a symbol of either conflict or seduction. In Tristan (12th century), Tristram and Yseult play Chess on their journey to King Marks court, during which they become lovers. The romance Les Eschez Amoureux describes in considerable detail a game in which a lady beats her suitor. In Floire et Blanchefleur, the hero is able to enter the Saracen prison in which Blanchefleur is held, thanks to winning a game against the porter. This poem became the model of many novels across European example is Boccaccios Philicopo. The clich of Chess as seduction existed even up to modern times, for example in the drama Una Partita a Scacchi by Giuseppe Giacosa (1875). In modern times, the essay by Edgar Allan Poe, Maelzels Chess Player, anticipated his detective stories and revealed that the famous Chess automaton known as the Turk, which also beat Napoleon, was a fraud. The absolute self-referential game logic is often parodied in novels; Lewis Carrolls Through The Looking Glass is a model for further thematic developments, as in Massimo Bontempellis The Chess Set in the Mirror. The same logic is perhaps the key to understanding the link between Chess and insanity, such as in works like The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov and The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig. The latter is considered, by players, the best novel about Chess. At first, the reader sympathizes with the mysterious challenger against the arrogant world champion, but then is compelled to take the champions side when the challenger shows signs of insanity. The theme of Nazism is also present in the short story, as in other novels like The Luneburg Variation by Paolo Maurensig, which was probably inspired by true World War II episodes, such as the death of many Jewish players, like the Polish player and problematist David Przepirka (1942). In the same period, many of the worlds great players became instruments of Nazi propaganda, and the same Aleksandr Alekhine was forced to write a delirious article on Jewish and Aryan Chess, in 1941. Chess is present also in popular literature. Raymond Chandler, another Chess addict, characterizes his detective Philip Marlowe as a Chess lover in the The Big Sleep. Fine Arts From Arabian to Western middle age manuscripts, Chess is often represented in miniatures, having the same symbolic values attributed to the game in novels. Depicted

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find the same inquietude in Blade Runner by Ridley Scott (1982), where an android beats its human father at Chess, and then kills him. The metaphor of a Chess game can be found in other works by Scott, such as Black Hawk Down (2001). But the most interesting movie about Chess is perhaps The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman (1957), in which a crusadera knightplays Chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black Plague. In this film, the game becomes a second narrative structure, a counterpoint to the plot. As in Kubricks Odyssey, an actual game can be found in Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone (Jovanovic-Manzardo, Imperia 1967).
See Also: Ancient India; Game Theory; Human Relationships in Play; Inter-Gender Play; Luck and Skill in Play; Memory and Play; Play and Literacy; Russia. Bibliography. Aleksandr Alekhine, Ajedrez Hipermoderno (Editorial Castilla, 1945); N.J. Cooke, R.S. Atlas, D.M. Lane, and R.C. Berger, Role of High-Level Knowledge in Memory for Chess Positions, American Journal of Psychology (c.106/3, 1993); H.A. Davidson, A Short History of Chess (Greenberg, 1949); Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Indiana University Press, 1976); Reuben Fine, The Psychology of the Chess Player (Dover Pub., 1956); Mike Fox and Richard James, The Complete Chess Addict (Faber and Faber, 1987); A.D. de Groot, Intuition in Chess, International Computer Chess Association ICCA Journal (June, 1986); Louis Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, (University of Wisconsin Press, 1961); Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (Burnett Books, 1983); D.D. Horgan, Chess Expertise in Children, Applied Cognitive Psychology (v.4/2, 1990); Israel Albert Horowitz, From Morphy to Fischer: A History of the World Chess Championship (Batsford, 1973); N.V. Krogijus, Psychology in Chess, (R.M.H. Press, 1976); Emanuel Lasker, Laskers Manual of Chess (Dover, 1925, repr. 1960); Edgar Allan Poe, Maelzels Chess Player, in Complete Works (Harvard University Press, 1902); P. Saariluoma, Visuospatial and Articulatory Interference in Chess Players Information Intake, in Applied Cognitive Psychology (Routledge, 1992); Ferdinand de Saussure, Course de Linguistique Gnrale [Course in General Lingustics, 1922] (Open court Classics, 1998); H.A. Simon, and F. Gobet, Templates in Chess Memory. A Mechanism for Recalling Several Boards, in Cognitive Psychology (v.31/1, 1996); Gareth Williams, Master Pieces (Quintet Publishing Limited, 2000). Francesco Galofaro Bologna University

Chile
This South American country stretches along the Pacific Coast of South America, measuring 2,650 miles from north to south, but is, on average, no more than 110 miles wide. There had been a small indigenous population there for at least 11,000 years, with the first Spanish explorer arriving in 1535. The town of Santiago, now the countrys capital, was founded six years later. Initially, settlers established farms using the local population as slaves to farm them. Chile became independent in 1810. Nearly 90 percent of the population lives in cities or towns. The indigenous population used traditional musical instruments such as the zampona, the bomba, the charango, and the quena, and the creole population was involved in organizing masked dancing ceremonies. Many of the early migrants from Spain were from the Basque region, and this influence was seen by the playing of pelota, although today few people play this instrument. Horse riding and rodeos also date from this period. From the 18th century, flying kites became a popular amusement of wealthier Chileans, especially from September until Marchit was said to have been introduced to the country by Roman Catholic monks. Gradually, kite flying came to be enjoyed by powerful people as well. There is a Chilean Kite Fliers Association, and in some competitions, five people compete against each other. There are also kites that have two lines so that two people can handle them. Activities were often organized by clubs and professional societies called gremios. Later, during the 19th century, there were quite substantial numbers of English, Irish, and Scottish immigrants, especially in southern Chile around Puenta Arenas, and at the port of Valparaiso, near Santiago. The British established the Vina del Mar Lawn Tennis Club in 1881, opening tennis courts at the Valparaiso Sporting Club in 1910. The latter was also the location of the Valparaiso Golf Club when it opened in 1897, with the British community establishing another golf course in Santiago in the Prince of Wales Country Club. At around the same time, other games were introduced, including cricket, polo, horse racing, rugby, and soccer. The first soccer game was played between British residents in Santiago in 1891, with a Briton called John Ramsay later deemed the father of Chilean footballthe game at that time being entirely recreational. Since then, soccer has become the major recreational sport in the