ChessWorld Hitchhiker's Guide to Chess

Scope: This glossary does not intend to cover player names, opening names, or Composition terms. The Glossary aims to relate the terms to ChessWorld where possible when giving examples.
If you have contributions, corrections or questions, please post them to the Chess Forum for discussion.
There is a dedicated Chess Openings Glossary

Glossary Course Modules with Game Examples

Glossary Course Modules with Tactical Puzzle Examples

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M

Major piece
A queen or a rook

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Majority
A player has a pawn majority when he has more pawns on one side of the board than his opponent.

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Master
A title awarded by National Federations affiliated with the World Chess Federation.

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Mate
Short for checkmate.

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Material
Any chess piece or pieces other than the king.

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Middlegame
The portion of the game between the opening and the endgame.

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Miniature
A game in which one side won in less than 20 full moves. Here is an example of a miniature game which is a game from the USSR vs. Rest of World match in 1970, where Larsen was playing board 1 representing the "Rest of World". Fischer was board 2. Here the Russian GM Spassky shows how dangerous he can be :-

[Click here to replay the game]
Larsen,Bent vs. Spassky,Boris V., 1970
1.b3 e5 2.Bb2 Nc6 3.c4 Nf6 4.Nf3 e4 5.Nd4 Bc5 6.Nxc6 dxc6 7.e3 Bf5 8.Qc2 Qe7 9.Be2 O-O-O 10.f4 Ng4 11.g3 h5 12.h3 h4 13.hxg4 hxg3 14.Rg1 Rh1 15.Rxh1 g2 16.Rf1 Qh4+ 17.Kd1 0-1


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Minor piece
A bishop or a knight.

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Minority attack
An advance by a small number of pawns against a greater number. See diagram below:-








Analyse position

White's plan here might involve the move b4-b5 which would represent a "Minority attack" with the idea of inflicting structural damage on Black's pawn structure. If the capture b5xc6 is allowed to occur, this would leave Black with an isolated a pawn as well as a backward c pawn.

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Move
A turn of play, or what one does on it.

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