Stalemate is a situation in chess where the player whose turn it is to move is not in check and has no legal move. Stalemate results in a draw . During the endgame , stalemate is a resource that can enable the player with the inferior position to draw the game rather than lose. In more complex positions, stalemate is much rarer, usually taking the form of a swindle that succeeds only if the superior side is inattentive. Stalemate is also a common theme in endgame studies and other chess problems .
129-476: Xiangqi ( / ˈ ʃ ɑː ŋ tʃ i / ; Chinese : 象棋 ; pinyin : xiàngqí ), commonly known as Chinese chess or elephant chess , is a strategy board game for two players. It is the most popular board game in China. Xiangqi is in the same family of games as shogi , janggi , Western chess , chaturanga , and Indian chess . Besides China and areas with significant ethnic Chinese communities, this game
258-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
387-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
516-426: A 1925 game between Savielly Tartakower and Richard Réti . The same position, except shifted to the e- file , occurred in a 2009 game between Gata Kamsky and Vladimir Kramnik . The position in diagram 3 is an example of a pawn drawing against a queen . Stalemates of this sort can often save a player from losing an apparently hopeless position (see Queen versus pawn endgame ). The position in diagram 5
645-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
774-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
903-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
1032-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
1161-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
1290-430: A decisive material advantage, but Black could find no way to make progress because of various stalemate resources available to White. The game continued: Avoiding the threatened 73...Nc2+. 76...Nc2+ 77.Rxc2+! Kxc2 is stalemate. 77...Kxc3 is stalemate. 79...Rd3 80.Rxd3+! leaves Black with either insufficient material to win after 80...Nxd3 81.Kxa2 or a standard fortress in a corner draw after 80...Kxd3. Now
1419-457: A double stalemate position was discovered by Enzo Minerva and published in the Italian newspaper l'Unità on 14 August 2007: 1.c4 d5 2.Qb3 Bh3 3.gxh3 f5 4.Qxb7 Kf7 5.Qxa7 Kg6 6.f3 c5 7.Qxe7 Rxa2 8.Kf2 Rxb2 9.Qxg7+ Kh5 10.Qxg8 Rxb1 11.Rxb1 Kh4 12.Qxh8 h5 13.Qh6 Bxh6 14.Rxb8 Be3+ 15.dxe3 Qxb8 16.Kg2 Qf4 17.exf4 d4 18.Be3 dxe3. The stalemate rule has had a convoluted history. Although stalemate
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#17327808901481548-544: A draw is totally illogical, since it represents the ultimate zugzwang , where any move would get your king taken". The British master T. H. Tylor argued in a 1940 article in the British Chess Magazine that the present rule, treating stalemate as a draw, "is without historical foundation and irrational, and primarily responsible for a vast percentage of draws, and hence should be abolished". Years later, Fred Reinfeld wrote, "When Tylor wrote his attack on
1677-463: A drawn endgame. Not 5.Rxb2+? Bxb2 6.Nc4+ Kb5 7.Nxb2 Bh5! trapping White's knight. 4. Rxd6+! Kxd6 5. Nxc4+! Nxc4 6. Rxb6+ Nxb6+ Moving the king is actually a better try, but the resulting endgame of two knights and a bishop against a rook is a well-established theoretical draw. 7. Kd8! (rightmost diagram) Black is three pieces ahead, but if White is allowed to take the bishop, the two knights are insufficient to force checkmate . The only way to save
1806-685: A horse is called " hobbling the horse's leg" (蹩馬腿). The diagram on the right illustrates the horse's movement. Since horses can be blocked, it is possible for one player's horse to have an asymmetric attack advantage if an opponent's horse is blocked, as seen in the diagram on the right. The horse is sometimes called the "knight" by English-speaking players, due to their similar movements. Chariots (or rooks or cars ) are labelled 車 jū for Black and 俥 jū for Red in sets marked with Traditional Chinese characters and 车 for both Black and Red in sets marked with Simplified Chinese characters . Some traditional sets use 車 for both colours. In
1935-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
2064-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
2193-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
2322-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
2451-403: A stalemate was a drawn game. Throughout history, a stalemate has at various times been: Periodically, writers have argued that stalemate should again be made a win for the side causing the stalemate, on the grounds that the goal of chess is conceptually to capture the king and checkmate merely ends it when this is inevitable. Grandmaster Larry Kaufman writes, "In my view, calling stalemate
2580-415: A stalemate was standardized as a draw in the 19th century ( see § History of the stalemate rule , below ). Before this standardization, its treatment varied widely, including being deemed a win for the stalemating player, a half-win for that player, or a loss for that player; not being permitted; and resulting in the stalemated player missing a turn. Stalemate rules vary in variants and other games of
2709-630: A strong-looking move that threatens 68.Qxf6, winning a third pawn, or 68.Rc7, further constricting Black. Black responded 67... Qc1 ! If White takes Black's undefended rook with 68.Qxd8, Black's desperado queen forces the draw with 68...Qh1+ 69.Kg3 Qh2+!, compelling 70.Kxh2 stalemate (second diagram). If White avoids the stalemate with 68.Rxg7+ Kxg7 69.Qxd8, Black draws by perpetual check with 69...Qh1+ 70.Kg3 Qg1+ 71.Kf4 Qc1+! 72.Ke4 Qc6+! 73.Kd3 !? (73.d5 Qc4+; 73.Qd5 Qc2+) Qxf3+! 74.Kd2 Qg2+! 75.Kc3 Qc6+ 76.Kb4 Qb5+ 77.Ka3 Qd3+. Gelfand played 68. d5 instead but still only drew. In Troitsky – Vogt , 1896,
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#17327808901482838-498: A theoretical draw for many moves. White's bishop is useless; it cannot defend the queening square at a8 nor attack the black pawn on the light a4-square. If the white king heads towards the black pawn, the black king can move towards a8 and set up a fortress . The players were not on speaking terms, however, so neither would offer a draw by agreement . On his 124th move, White played 124.Bg7, delivering stalemate. Korchnoi said that it gave him pleasure to stalemate Karpov and that it
2967-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
3096-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
3225-478: A visual division between the two sides, only two pieces are affected by its presence: soldiers have an enhanced move after crossing the river, and elephants cannot cross it. The starting points of the soldiers and cannons are usually, but not always, marked with small crosses. The pieces start in the position shown in the diagram above. Which player moves first has varied throughout history and from one part of China to another. Different xiangqi books advise either that
3354-485: A widely used metaphor for other situations where there is a conflict or contest between two parties, such as war or political negotiations, and neither side is able to achieve victory, resulting in what is also called an impasse , a deadlock , or a Mexican standoff . Chess writers note that this usage is a misnomer because, unlike in chess, the situation is often a temporary one that is ultimately resolved, even if it seems currently intractable. The term "stalemate"
3483-446: A win (since any move would get the king taken), checklock should be a draw. (In a checklock position, no forward play is possible even if exposing the king to check is valid, so the king cannot get captured. The same logic would apply to deadlock.) If stalemate were a loss for the player unable to move, the outcome of some endgames would be affected. In some situations the superior side can force stalemate but not checkmate. In others,
3612-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
3741-709: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
3870-401: Is a special kind of stalemate, in which no move is possible even if one ignores the need to avoid self-check. George P. Jelliss has called this type of stalemate a deadlock . Adding a White knight on f2 would produce a checklock : a checkmate position where no moves are possible, even if one ignores the need to avoid self-check. In general, positions with no moves at all available (even ignoring
3999-463: Is also a popular pastime in Vietnam, where it is known as cờ tướng , literally 'General's chess', in contrast with Western chess or cờ vua , literally 'King's chess'. The game represents a battle between two armies, with the primary object being to checkmate the enemy's general (king). Distinctive features of xiangqi include the cannon ( pao ), which must jump to capture; a rule prohibiting
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4128-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
4257-412: Is given below: White played 1. Ngxf6+ Qxf6+ (if 1...exf6 then 2.Ne7#) 2. Nxf6+ exf6 3. c4 c5 4. a4 a5 , leaving a double stalemate position. 1.Ndxf6+ would not have worked, for then 1...exf6 is possible. (Under the present rules, the game would have ended after 1...Qxf6+, as the position is then dead: no sequence of legal moves leads to either side being checkmated.) The fastest known game ending in
4386-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
4515-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
4644-621: Is similar to algebraic notation for Western chess. Letters are used for files and numbers for ranks. File "a" is on Red's left and rank "1" is nearest to Red. A point's designation does not depend on which player moves; for both sides "a1" is the lowest left point from Red's side. [single-letter piece abbreviation][former position][capture indication][new position][check indication][analysis] Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
4773-508: Is sometimes called the "rook" by English-speaking players, since it moves identically to the rook in Western chess. Chinese players (and others) often call this piece a car, since that is one modern meaning of the character 車. Cannons are labelled 砲 pào (" catapult ") for Black and 炮 pào ("cannon") for Red. The names are homophones , though sometimes 炮 is used for both Red and Black. The 石 shí radical of 砲 means "stone", and
4902-488: Is sometimes used incorrectly as a generic term for a draw in chess. While draws are common, they are rarely the direct result of stalemate. With Black to move, Black is stalemated in diagrams 1 to 5. Stalemate is an important factor in the endgame – the endgame setup in diagram 1, for example, quite frequently is relevant in play (see King and pawn versus king endgame ). The position in diagram 1 occurred in an 1898 game between Amos Burn and Harry Pillsbury and also in
5031-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
5160-479: Is that king and lone minor piece against king cannot force stalemate in general. Emanuel Lasker and Richard Réti proposed that both stalemate and king and minor versus king (with the minor piece side to move) should give ¾ points to the superior side: this would effectively restore not only the old stalemate rule but also the old bare king rule. Kaufman and correspondence grandmaster Arno Nickel have proposed going even further, and giving only ¼ point as well to
5289-547: Is the "White to Play and Draw" study at right, composed by the American master Frederick Rhine and published in 2006. White saves a draw with 1. Ne5+! Black wins after 1.Nb4+? Kb5! or 1.Qe8+? Bxe8 2.Ne5+ Kb5! 3.Rxb2+ Nb3. 1... Bxe5 After 1...Kb5? 2.Rxb2+ Nb3 3.Rxc4! Qxe3 (best; 3...Qb8+ 4.Kd7 Qxh8 5.Rxb3+ forces checkmate ) 4.Rxb3+! Qxb3 5.Qh1! Bf5+ 6.Kd8!, White is winning. 2. Qe8+! 2.Qxe5? Qb7+ 3.Kd8 Qd7#. 2... Bxe8 3. Rh6+ Bd6 3...Kb5 4.Rxb6+ Kxb6 5.Nxc4+ also leads to
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5418-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
5547-442: Is today. However, Kaufman tested the idea of scoring stalemates higher than draws with the chess engine Komodo , and found that the impact is quite small because it is rare to be able to force stalemate but not checkmate: while all king and pawn versus king endgames become wins when the pawn is protected (except when the attacking king is trapped in front of its own rook pawn), this does not turn out to be common enough. The problem
5676-436: Is universally recognized as a draw today, that was not the case for much of the game's history. In the forerunners to modern chess, such as chaturanga , delivering stalemate resulted in a loss. This was changed in shatranj , however, where stalemating was a win. This practice persisted in chess as played in early 15th-century Spain. Lucena (c. 1497), however, treated stalemate as an inferior form of victory; it won only half
5805-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
5934-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
6063-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
6192-410: Is used to indicate horizontal or lateral movement. For a piece that moves diagonally (such as the horse or elephant), the plus or minus sign is used rather than the period. Thus, the most common opening in the game would be written as: According to World Xiangqi Federation (WXF), in the case of tripled, quadrupled, or quintupled soldiers (pawns), there is no need to specify the P for pawn. Instead,
6321-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
6450-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
6579-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
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#17327808901486708-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
6837-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
6966-567: The fifty-move rule . After 48...Qg6! 49.Rf8 Qe6! 50.Rh8+ Kg6, Black remains a piece ahead after 51.Qxe6 Nxe6, or forces mate after 51.gxf4 Re1+ and 52...Qa2+. The position at right occurred in Boris Gelfand – Vladimir Kramnik , 1994 FIDE Candidates match, game 6, in Sanghi Nagar , India. Kramnik, down two pawns and on the defensive, would be very happy with a draw. Gelfand has just played 67. Re4–e7 ? (first diagram),
7095-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
7224-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
7353-417: The "pawn" by English-speaking players, due to the pieces' similar movements. These approximate values do not take into account the position of the piece in question (except the soldier in a general sense), the positions of other pieces on the board, or the number of pieces remaining. In what follows, “minor piece” will refer to horses and cannons, and "defensive piece", unless otherwise specified, will refer to
7482-634: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Stalemate The outcome of
7611-455: The Century". Evans sacrificed his queen on move 49 and offered his rook on move 50. White's rook has been called the eternal rook . Capturing it results in stalemate, but otherwise it stays on the seventh rank and checks Black's king ad infinitum (i.e. perpetual check ). The game would inevitably end in a draw by agreement , by threefold repetition , or by an eventual claim under
7740-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
7869-482: The action perpetual. The above rules to prevent perpetual checking and chasing, while popular, are not the only ones; there are numerous end game situations. Each player controls an army of 16 pieces; the armies are usually coloured red and black. Pieces are flat circular disks labelled or engraved with a Chinese character identifying the piece type, and in a colour indicating which player has ownership. The black pieces are marked with somewhat different characters from
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#17327808901487998-449: The bishop is to move it, resulting in stalemate. A similar idea occasionally enables the inferior side to save a draw in the ending of bishop, knight, and king versus lone king . At right is a composition by A. J. Roycroft which was published in the British Chess Magazine in 1957. White draws with 1. c7! after which there are two main lines: Some chess problems require "White to move and stalemate Black in n moves" (rather than
8127-414: The black or red side moves first. Some books refer to the two sides as north and south ; which direction corresponds to which colour also varies from source to source. Generally, Red moves first in most modern tournaments. Each player in turn moves one piece from the point it occupies, to another point. Pieces are generally not permitted to move through points occupied by other pieces, the exception being
8256-407: The cannon has a special capture move described below. The game ends when one player checkmates the other's general. When the general is in danger of being captured by the enemy player on their next move, the enemy player has "delivered a check" ( 照將/將軍 , abbreviated as 將 jiāng ), and the general is "in check". A check should be announced. If the general's player can make no move to prevent
8385-408: The cannon’s capturing move. A piece can be moved onto a point occupied by an enemy piece, in which case the enemy piece is captured and removed from the board. A player cannot capture one of their own pieces. Pieces are never promoted (converted into other pieces), although the soldier gains the ability to move sideways after it crosses the river. Almost all pieces capture using their normal moves, while
8514-468: The case of purely vertical movement, number of ranks traversed] The file numbers are counted from each player's right to each player's left. In case there are two identical pieces in one file, symbols + (front) and – (rear) are used instead of former file number. Direction of movement is indicated via an operator symbol. A plus sign is used to indicate forward movement. A minus sign is used to indicate backward movement. A dot or period or equals sign
8643-525: The centre point. Each of these areas is known as 宮 gōng , a palace. Dividing the two opposing sides, between the fifth and sixth ranks, is 河 hé , the "river". The river is usually marked with the phrases 楚河 chǔ hé , meaning "River of the Chu ", and 漢界 hàn jiè , meaning "Border of the Han ", a reference to the Chu–Han War . Although the river (or Hanchu boundary ) provides
8772-510: The character 士 for both colours. The advisors start on either side of the general. They move and capture one point diagonally and may not leave the palace, which confines them to five points on the board. The advisor is probably derived from the mantri in chaturanga , like the queen in Western chess. There is some controversy about whether "士" really is intended to mean "scholar", "gentleman" which would be "士人", or "guard", "guardian" which would be "衛士" (simplified Chinese: 卫士). One argument for
8901-486: The chess family . The first recorded use of stalemate is from 1765. It is a compounding of Middle English stale and mate (meaning checkmate ). Stale is probably derived from Anglo-French estale meaning "standstill", a cognate of "stand" and "stall", both ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *sta- . The first recorded use in a figurative sense is in 1885. Stalemate has become
9030-436: The context of xiangqi, all of these characters are pronounced as jū (instead of the common pronunciation chē ). The chariot moves and captures any distance orthogonally, but may not jump over intervening pieces. The chariots begin the game on the points at the corners of the board. The chariot is often considered to be the strongest piece in the game due to its freedom of movement and lack of restrictions. The chariot
9159-522: The corresponding red pieces. On mainland China , most sets still use traditional Chinese characters (as opposed to simplified Chinese characters ). Modern pieces are usually plastic, though some sets are wooden, and more expensive sets may use jade . In more ancient times, many sets were simple unpainted woodcarvings; thus, to distinguish between pieces of the two sides, most corresponding pieces used characters that were similar but varied slightly. This practice may have originated in situations where there
9288-492: The defending player can use stalemate as a defensive technique to avoid losing (under the current rule): The effect if stalemates were to be scored as ¾–¼ would be similar but less severe, as then the weaker side would still be rewarded somewhat for avoiding checkmate via stalemate, just not as much as before. Not all variants of chess consider the stalemate to be a draw. Many regional variants, as well some variants of Western chess, have adopted their own rules on how to treat
9417-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
9546-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
9675-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
9804-748: The enemy general. In practice, this rule means that creating this situation in the first place means moving into check, and is therefore not allowed. The Indian name king for this piece was changed to general because of Chinese naming taboos ; China's rulers objected to their royal titles being given to game pieces. Despite this, the general is sometimes called the "king" by English-speaking players, due to their similar functions as royal pieces . Advisors (also known as guards and less commonly as assistants , mandarins , ministers or warriors ) are labelled 士 shì ("scholar", "gentleman", " officer ", "guardian") for Black and 仕 shì ("scholar", "official", "guardian") for Red. Rarely, sets use
9933-443: The famous endgame study composer Alexey Troitsky pulled off an elegant swindle in actual play. After Troitsky's 1. Rd1! , Black fell into the trap with the seemingly crushing 1... Bh3? , threatening 2...Qg2#. The game concluded 2. Rxd8+ Kxd8 3. Qd1+! Qxd1 stalemate . White's bishop, knight, and f-pawn are all pinned and unable to move. Stalemate is a frequent theme in endgame studies and other chess compositions . An example
10062-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
10191-446: The following special rules are used to make it harder to draw the game by endless checking or chasing, regardless of whether the positions of the pieces are repeated or not: Different sets of rules set different limits on what is considered perpetual. For example, club xiangqi rules allow a player to check or chase six consecutive times using one piece, twelve times using two pieces, and eighteen times using three pieces before considering
10320-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
10449-439: The game Milan Matulović – Nikolay Minev (first diagram). Play continued: The only meaningful attempt to make progress. Now all moves by Black (like 3...Ra3+ ? ) lose, with one exception. Now 4.Rxa6 would be stalemate. White played 4.Rc5+ instead, and the game was drawn several moves later. In the game Elijah Williams – Daniel Harrwitz (first diagram), Black was up a knight and a pawn in an endgame. This would normally be
10578-417: The game located on every other point one row back from the edge of the river. They move and capture by advancing one point. Once they have crossed the river, they may also move and capture one point horizontally. Soldiers cannot move backward, and therefore cannot retreat; after advancing to the last rank of the board, however, a soldier may still move sideways at the enemy's edge. The soldier is sometimes called
10707-421: The game next to the elephants, on their outside flanks. A horse moves and captures one point orthogonally and then one point diagonally away from its former position, a move which is traditionally described as being like the character 日 Rì . The horse does not jump as the knight does in Western chess, and can be blocked by a piece of either colour located one point horizontally or vertically adjacent to it. Blocking
10836-413: The general's capture, the situation is called "checkmate" ( 將死 ). Unlike in chess, in which stalemate is a draw, in xiangqi, it is a loss for the stalemated player. In xiangqi, a player—often with a material or positional disadvantage—may attempt to check or chase pieces in a way such that the moves fall in a cycle, preventing the opponent from winning. While this is accepted in Western chess, in xiangqi,
10965-413: The generals from facing each other directly; areas on the board called the river and palace , which restrict the movement of some pieces but enhance that of others; and the placement of the pieces on the intersections of the board lines, rather than within the squares. Xiangqi is played on a board nine lines wide and ten lines long. As in the game Go ( 圍碁 ; or Wéi qí 圍棋 ), the pieces are placed on
11094-618: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
11223-485: The intersections, which are known as points . The vertical lines are known as files ( Chinese : 路 ; pinyin : lù ; lit. 'road'), and the horizontal lines are known as ranks ( Chinese : 線/綫 ; pinyin : xiàn ; lit. 'line'). Centred at the first to third and eighth to tenth ranks of the board are two zones, each three points by three points, demarcated by two diagonal lines connecting opposite corners and intersecting at
11352-531: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
11481-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
11610-415: The latter is that their functionality seems to be to guard/protect the general. The common Western translation "advisor" does not reflect this layer of meaning. Elephants (or bishops ) are labeled 象 xiàng ("elephant") for Black and 相 xiàng ("minister") for Red. They are located next to the advisors. These pieces move and capture exactly two points diagonally and may not jump over intervening pieces;
11739-531: The more common "White to move and checkmate Black in n moves"). Problemists have also tried to construct the shortest possible game ending in stalemate. Sam Loyd devised one just ten moves long: 1.e3 a5 2.Qh5 Ra6 3.Qxa5 h5 4.Qxc7 Rah6 5.h4 f6 6.Qxd7+ Kf7 7.Qxb7 Qd3 8.Qxb8 Qh7 9.Qxc8 Kg6 10.Qe6 (first diagram). A similar stalemate is reached after: 1.d4 c5 2.dxc5 f6 3.Qxd7+ Kf7 4.Qxd8 Bf5 5.Qxb8 h5 6.Qxa8 Rh6 7.Qxb7 a6 8.Qxa6 Bh7 9.h4 Kg6 10.Qe6 (Frederick Rhine). Loyd also demonstrated that stalemate can occur with all
11868-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
11997-1151: The move is described as being like the character 田 Tián ("field"), in reference to the board's squares. Blocking an elephant with a diagonally adjacent piece is known as "blocking the elephant's eye" ( 塞象眼 ). Elephants may not cross the river to attack the enemy general , and serve as defensive pieces. Because an elephant's movement is restricted to just seven board positions, it can be easily trapped or threatened. The two elephants are often used to defend each other. The Chinese characters for "minister" and "elephant" are homophones in Mandarin ( Listen ) and both have alternative meanings as "appearance" or "image". However, in English, both are referred to as elephants, and less commonly as "bishops", due to their similar movements. Horses (or knights ) are labelled 馬 mǎ for Black and 傌 mǎ for Red in sets marked with Traditional Chinese characters and 马 mǎ for both Black and Red in sets marked with Simplified Chinese characters . Some sets use 馬 for both colours. Horses begin
12126-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
12255-449: The name for the cannon on both sides is 炮; the name for the horse on both sides is 馬; forward motion is indicated with 進 (pronounced jìn ); backward motion is indicated with 退 ( tuì ); sideways motion is indicated with 平 ( píng ); and numbers are written in Chinese either for both players or for just Black. Thus, the most common opening in the game might be written as: This system is unofficial and principally used by Western players. It
12384-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
12513-420: The need to avoid self-check) are called locks . In this position from the game Viswanathan Anand – Vladimir Kramnik from the 2007 World Chess Championship , Black played 65...Kxf5, stalemating White. (Any other move by Black loses.) An intentional stalemate occurred on the 124th move of the fifth game of the 1978 World Championship match between Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov . The game had been
12642-414: The non-royal pieces that cannot cross the river, namely advisors and elephants. Other common rules of assessment: There are several types of notation used to record xiangqi games. In each case the moves are numbered and written with the same general pattern. It is clearer but not required to write each move pair on a separate line. The book The Chess of China describes a move notation method in which
12771-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
12900-516: The path of attack. The piece over which the cannon jumps is called the 炮臺 (trad.) / 炮台 (simp.) pào tái ("cannon platform" or "screen"). Any number of unoccupied spaces, including none, may exist between the cannon, screen, and the piece to be captured. Cannons can be exchanged for horses immediately from their starting positions. Soldiers (or pawns ) are labelled 卒 zú ("pawn" or "private") for Black and 兵 bīng ("soldier") for Red. Each side starts with five soldiers. Soldiers begin
13029-414: The pieces on the board: 1.d4 d6 2.Qd2 e5 3.a4 e4 4.Qf4 f5 5.h3 Be7 6.Qh2 Be6 7.Ra3 c5 8.Rg3 Qa5+ 9.Nd2 Bh4 10.f3 Bb3 11.d5 e3 12.c4 f4 (second diagram). Games such as this are occasionally played in tournaments as a pre-arranged draw. There are chess compositions featuring double stalemate. To the right are two double stalemate positions, in which neither side has a legal move. An example from actual play
13158-418: The players agreed to a draw , since 84...Kxb3 or 84...Rxb3 is stalemate, as is 84...Ra8 85.Rxc3+! Kxc3. Black could still have won the game until his critical mistake on move 82. Instead of 82...Nc3, 82...Nb4 wins; for example, after 83.Rc8 Re3 84.Rb8+ Kc5 85.Rc8+ Kd5 86.Rd8+ Kc6 87.Ra8 Re1+ 88.Kb2 Kc5 89.Kc3 a1=Q+, Black wins. This 2007 game, Magnus Carlsen – Loek van Wely , ended in stalemate. White used
13287-632: The ranks of the board are numbered 1 to 10 from closest to farthest away, followed by a digit 1 to 9 for files from right to left. Both values are relative to the moving player. Moves are then indicated as follows: [piece name] ([former rank][former file])-[new rank][new file] Thus, the most common opening in the game would be written as: A notation system partially described in A Manual of Chinese Chess and used by several computer software implementations describes moves in relative terms as follows: [single-letter piece abbreviation][former file][operator indicating direction of movement][new file, or in
13416-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
13545-406: The red side. The general starts the game at the midpoint of the back edge, within the palace. The general may move and capture one point orthogonally and may not leave the palace, with the following exception. If the two generals face each other along the same file with no intervening pieces, the 飛將 ("flying general") move may be executed, in which the general to move crosses the board to capture
13674-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
13803-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
13932-420: The second-rank defense in a rook and bishop versus rook endgame for 46 moves. The fifty-move rule was about to come into effect, under which White could claim a draw. The game ended: White was stalemated. Although stalemate usually occurs in the endgame, it can also occur with more pieces on the board. Outside of relatively simple endgame positions, such as those above, stalemate occurs rarely, usually when
14061-436: The side that brings about a threefold repetition (which likewise has precedents in xiangqi, shogi, and Go ). According to his tests with Komodo, chess at the level of a human World Championship match would have a draw rate of 65.6%; scoring stalemate as ¾–¼ reduces the draw rate to 63.4%; scoring stalemate and bare king as ¾–¼ brings it to 55.9%; and scoring stalemate, bare king, and threefold repetition as ¾–¼ brings it all
14190-425: The side with the superior position has overlooked the possibility of stalemate. This is typically realized by the inferior side's sacrifice of one or more pieces in order to force stalemate. A piece that is offered as a sacrifice to bring about stalemate is sometimes called a desperado . One of the best-known examples of the desperado is the game Larry Evans – Samuel Reshevsky that was dubbed "The Swindle of
14319-517: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
14448-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
14577-403: The soldiers are numbered starting from the frontmost soldier, and this number replaces the usual piece abbreviation. The file number is given immediately after as usual. Thus the notation to move the middle of a set of tripled soldiers on the 5th file to the 4th file would be: In older books written in Chinese the system is the same, except that: the names of the pieces are written in Chinese;
14706-576: The stake in games played for money, and this continued to be the case in Spain as late as 1600. From about 1600 to 1800, the rule in England was that stalemate was a loss for the player administering it, a rule that the eminent chess historian H. J. R. Murray believes may have been adopted from Russian chess. That rule disappeared in England before 1820, being replaced by the French and Italian rule that
14835-413: The stalemate rule, he released about his unhappy head a swarm of peevish maledictions that are still buzzing." Larry Evans calls the proposal to make stalemate a win for the stalemating player a "crude proposal that ... would radically alter centuries of tradition and make chess boring". This rule change would cause a greater emphasis on material ; an extra pawn would be a greater advantage than it
14964-528: The stalemate. This game was in turn introduced to the Western world , where it would eventually evolve to modern-day Western chess , although the stalemate rule for Western chess was not standardized as a draw until the 19th century (see history of the rule ). Chaturanga also evolved into several other games in various regions of Asia , all of which have varying rules on stalemating: The majority of variants of Western chess do not specify any alterations to
15093-459: The stalemated player. In chaturanga , which is widely considered to be the common ancestor of all variants of chess, a stalemate was a win for the stalemated player. Around the 7th century, this game was adopted in the Middle East as shatranj with very similar rules to its predecessor; however, the stalemate rule was changed to its exact opposite: i.e. it was a win for the player delivering
15222-568: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
15351-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
15480-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
15609-416: The way down to 22.6%. (The same reduction of draws would occur if stalemate, bare king, and threefold repetition were scored as 1–0 instead of ¾–¼, but the point of the ¾–¼ scoring is to allow the weaker side to still benefit from avoiding checkmate, while giving the stronger side something to play for even when checkmate cannot be attained.) Jelliss has suggested that under the logic that stalemate should be
15738-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
15867-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
15996-405: The 火 huǒ radical of 炮 means "fire". Both colours' pieces are normally referred to as cannons in English. The black piece is sometimes labelled 包 bāo. Each player has two cannons, which start on the row behind the soldiers, two points in front of the horses. Cannons move like chariots, any distance orthogonally without jumping, but can only capture by jumping a single piece of either colour along
16125-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
16254-485: Was good to advance the b-pawn because he could win the white rook with a skewer if it captured the pawn. Play went: Now 60...Rh2+ 61.Kf3! Rxb2 would be stalemate (second diagram). Smyslov played 60...Kg4, and the game was drawn after 61.Kf1 (see Rook and pawn versus rook endgame ). Whereas the possibility of stalemate arose in the Bernstein–Smyslov game because of a blunder , it can also arise without one, as in
16383-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
16512-470: Was only one material available to make the pieces from and no colouring material available to distinguish the opposing armies. The oldest xiangqi piece found to date is a 俥 (chariot) piece. It is kept in the Three Gorges Museum . Generals (or kings ) are labelled 將 (trad.) / 将 (simp.) jiàng ("general") on the black side and 帥 (trad.) / 帅 (simp.) shuài ("marshal") on
16641-417: Was slightly humiliating. Until 2021, this was the longest game played in a World Chess Championship final match, as well as the only World Championship game to end in stalemate before 2007. Sometimes, a surprise stalemate saves a game. In the game Ossip Bernstein – Vasily Smyslov (first diagram), Black can win by sacrificing the f-pawn and using the king to support the b-pawn. However, Smyslov thought it
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