Chess Dictionary — A

Terms starting with A (15)

Absolute Seventh Intermediate

An absolute seventh is a rook on the seventh rank that cannot be attacked or driven away by enemy pawns, thereby securing permanent control of that rank.

Action Chess Intermediate

Action Chess is the informal North American name for rapid chess at the longer end of the scale, most often G/25 or G/30 with or without a small increment, giving enough time for real calculation while still allowing two or three games in an evening.

Advantage Intermediate

An advantage is any lasting edge in material, position, or initiative that improves one player's chances of winning.

Alekhine's Gun Intermediate

Alekhine's Gun is a tripled major-piece battery on an open or half-open file with the queen behind two rooks to maximize pressure against a fixed weakness.

Alembic Beginner

Alembic is not a recognized term in standard chess terminology and carries no established meaning for any opening, tactic, or strategic concept.

Allumwandlung Advanced

Allumwandlung is a chess problem theme in which, across different lines or solutions, a pawn promotes to each of the four possible pieces: queen, rook, bishop and knight.

AlphaZero Intermediate

AlphaZero is DeepMind's neural-network chess engine that learned superhuman play through self-play reinforcement learning and defeated Stockfish in 2017.

Anastasia's Mate Intermediate

Anastasia's mate is a checkmate pattern in which a knight and rook combine to trap the enemy king, typically with the knight checking while the rook seals an adjacent file or rank and a friendly or enemy unit blocks one escape square.

Anderssen's Mate Intermediate

Anderssen's Mate is a checkmate pattern in which a rook or queen checks the enemy king along an edge file or rank, supported by a friendly bishop or pawn that covers the sole flight square while the king's own pieces often block its other escapes.

Antichess Intermediate

Antichess is a chess variant in which captures are mandatory and the player who captures the opponent's final piece or leaves the opponent with a lone king that has no legal moves wins.

Arabian Mate Intermediate

The Arabian mate is a checkmate pattern in which a knight and rook combine to trap the enemy king in a corner, with the knight delivering check from a safe square while the rook protects it and seals the adjacent rank or file.

Atomic Chess Intermediate

Atomic Chess is a chess variant in which every capture causes an explosion removing the captured piece, all adjacent non-pawn pieces, and the capturing piece itself unless it is a pawn, fundamentally changing piece values and king safety.

Attack Beginner

An attack is a move or coordinated plan that threatens an opponent’s piece, pawn, key square, or king, forcing them to respond.

Attacking Monster Intermediate

An attacking monster is a powerfully centralized piece, usually a knight or bishop, that controls many key squares and generates multiple threats against the enemy king or position.

Auto-Flag Intermediate

Auto-flag is an online chess server setting that automatically ends the game and awards the win on time when a player’s clock reaches zero, without requiring the opponent to make a manual claim.