As a chess dilettante, I love to keep track of the game when Masters are battling over the 64 squares. So, for the past two weeks, there have been no missing reports of the ding-dong duel between Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi at the World Chess Championship. In fact, it all began just before the championship started, when the five-time World Champion Magnus Carlsen mouse-slipped to lose an online Armageddon face-off against his old rival Hikaru Nakamura.

Here are some terms related to the mind game that I have encountered over the past few days. Not an exhaustive list, it will still help those who are inclined to decipher the game in black and white.

Mouse slip is a common error committed by a player when an online match is on. It occurs when the player clicks the wrong square to move a piece and either loses it or goes into a weak position as the result. This is exactly what happened with Carlsen in his last match, as the World Champion erroneously put his queen just by the side of Nepomniachtchis king with the latter sending it off the board.

An Armageddon clash is similar to regular chess but black has draw odds, meaning if the match is drawn then the player with black pieces wins but black starts with less time on the clock than white. It is resorted to when the two players are locked in an indecisive battle for a long time. It is a type of speed chess where the players play against time constraints. Other speed chess formats are rapid, blitz and bullet with different time controls. Chess time controls refer to how much time each player receives to complete a game. They can be simple or complex.

In general English, Armageddon is used figuratively to mean a crucial conflict or battle and is derived from Hebrew Har Megiddon (Mount of Megiddo), a location of the final battle between good and evil, as mentioned in the Bible. The word could stand either for the place where this battle will be held or for the battle itself.

Flagging is the act of winning or drawing a game on time. Usually used in blitz and bullet games, a player in a losing position may resort to superficial checks to make his rival run out of time on the clock. So, the player who was in a stronger position but lost due to flagging by the rival could say he has been dirty flagged.

As a move, castling or castle is the only time a player can move two specific pieces simultaneously. The king moves over two squares in either direction and the rook occupies the square on the other side of the king. However, a player cannot castle while in check, or when the king has moved from its original square and also when the kings travel path is controlled by an enemy piece. The term indicates that the king on the board has a well-defended position.

An interesting term, in meaning and etymology, is gambit. It is an opening when a player offers to give up a piece, usually a pawn, in favour of a positional advantage. It comes from an Italian expression related to wrestling dare, il gambetto (to put a leg forward in order to trip someone). It was applied to chess openings by Spanish priest Ruy Lopez in the 16th century who traced it to the Italian word but the Spanish form was gambit. In general usage, the word retains the flavour and meaning. For example, The new tax concessions by the government are clearly an election gambit.

The term increment is the specified amount of time added to players main time each time they make a move provided their time has not run out before they completed their move. It is also called Fischer after Bobby Fischer, the first native-American who won the World Championship, who patented this time method.

Then there is pawn promotion, a crucial move in endgame, when a pawn after reaching the last rank (the numbered row) can convert itself into one of the four higher pieces queen, rook, bishop or knight.

A player finds himself in a Zugzwang (comes from German) situation, when he is compelled to move and each one of his possible moves weakens his position. This too typically happens during an endgame.

In a few days, we will know who will wear the most coveted chess crown, Liren or Nepo. The World Championship so far has been exceptionally engaging with both going for the kill in every match and rightly so. Probably they remember what Mikhail Tal, the Magician from Riga, once said: If you wait on luck to turn up, life becomes very boring.

Wordly Wise is a weekly column by Amitabh Ranjan published every Saturday in the Explained section. Please tweet your feedback to @ieexplained

First published on: 22-04-2023 at 15:08 IST

Continued here:

In chess season, putting Armageddon, gambit, mouse-slip in black and white - The Indian Express