Charlotte, North Carolina

Charlotte has a number of sister cities, including:. See the list of chess variants for more details. Amtrak's Crescent and Carolinian and Piedmont trains connect Charlotte with New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, and Raleigh. Fischer Random Chess and other versions with different starting positions work by scrambling the initial starting position for every game. Plans for the light rail and commuter rail network will link uptown Charlotte with its immediate suburbs along four additional key corridors. Bobby Fischer noted the overemphasis on memorizing chess openings in normal chess and invented Fischer Random Chess. CATS has begun work on the $426.8 million south corridor light rail project, running from downtown to suburban Pineville with service scheduled to begin in 2007. There are over 1500 unique variants of chess.

The 2025 Corridor System Plan looks to upgrade Charlotte's public transportation by supplementing its established bus service with a light rail and commuter rail network along five key corridors at a total cost of over $1.7 billion. Chess variants are forms of chess where the game is played with a different board, special fairy pieces or different rules. The Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) is the local mass transit agency that operates historical trolleys, express shuttles and bus service that serve Charlotte and its immediate suburbs in both North and South Carolina. White moves one piece, black moves two, white moves three, black moves four etc.). Upon completion, the Outerbelt will have a total circumference of approximately 67 miles (108 km). (I.E. Charlotte's beltway, designated I-485 and nicknamed the "Outerbelt", is nearly complete and slated for completion by 2013. Yet another way is Scotch Chess, where the number of pieces one can move increases each turn.

Charlotte's central location between the population centers of the northeast and southeast has made it a transportation focal point and primary distribution center, with two major interstate highways, I-85 and I-77, intersecting near the city's center. And there is Bughouse, in which two teams of players share pieces of different colors and play against each other with both teams having the same abilites. Nonstop flights are available to many destinations across the United States, Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America and Canada. Another method of playing chess is called Suicide Chess, where the pieces function normally, however the goal is to lose all of ones pieces first and if a piece can be taken, it must be taken by the opposing side. American Airlines, Air Canada, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United, AirTran and Lufthansa are some of the major carriers that serve the airport. Moves are communicated via chess notation. It is served by many international and domestic airlines, and is the largest hub of US Airways. In this case the play is conducted without the players having sight of the positions of the pieces, or any physical contact with them.

Charlotte Douglas International Airport is the 17th busiest airport in the US. Chess can also be played blindfold. The average for cities in this category was 927 violent crimes per 100,000 population and 5968 property crimes per 100,000 population.
. Today, chess is often played on the internet through the Internet Chess Club, FICS or another host. Compared to other cities with population from 500,000 to 999,999 for 2004 (the first year that data was broken down by the FBI for the Uniform Crime Report in this manner), Charlotte's crime is a bit higher than average. Correspondence chess is chess played through the mail, e-mail or special Correspondence Chess Servers. Direct comparisons to national crime rates are difficult as many different urbanization levels are present across the country. When two players are separated by great distances they can still play chess.

However, since then the rate has risen to 7090 occurences per 100,000 population as of 2004, a trend not seen in the national statistics. When playing at a faster time, computers become relatively more powerful than humans. From 1997 to 2002 property crime dropped from 7,779 occurences per 100,000 population to 6,340 occurences per 100,000 population. Speed chess requires the player to spend less time thinking because if the player's time runs out, they lose. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, violent crimes have dropped from a rate of 1630 occurences per 100,000 population in 1997 to 1099 occurences per 100,00 population in 2004 The violent crime rate has decreased steadily from 1997 to 2004, though the 2004 rate was slightly higher than the 2003 rate (1099 compared to 1077). Bullet chess's time controls are less than three minutes. In general, the occurence of crime in Charlotte has been decreasing in recent years, as has crime nationally. An even faster version of chess is known as bullet chess or lightning chess.

Lawrence Homes Home Ice at the new Charlotte Bobcats Arena.


. Generally each side has three to fifteen minutes (five is common) for all of their moves. The Charlotte Checkers now play in St. Blitz chess is a version of chess where a chess clock is used to limit the time control for each player. Via the Hartford Wolf Pack, the Charlotte Checkers of the ECHL are a farm team for the NHL's New York Rangers. In some cases, a player will have a material advantage, but will not have enough material to force a checkmate. Charlotte is on the list of cities that the Florida Marlins are considering for relocation; team officials are expected to visit the city in late February or early March 2006 to discuss a move with city leaders and consider a plan to build a privately-funded stadium downtown. Controlling the tempo (time used by each move) becomes especially important when fewer pieces are left on the board.

The Triple-A Charlotte Knights, the top minor league affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, currently call the Charlotte area home (the team's stadium is located in nearby Fort Mill, South Carolina). If the game is relatively even, tablebases and endgame study are essential. Baseball has a long, rich history in the Queen City, dating back to 1901 when the Charlotte Hornets were formed. If one player has a large material advantage, checkmate may happen quickly in the endgame. Seventy-three percent of American motorsports employees are based within two hours of downtown Charlotte. During the endgame, pawns and kings become relatively more powerful pieces as both sides often try to promote their pawns. A vast majority of NASCAR teams and race shops are located within an hour's drive of Charlotte, and most NASCAR drivers maintain a residence in or near the city. This work has influenced generations of modern chess players in how they think in the middlegame.

Charlotte is a hub of stock car racing, with major races being held at nearby Lowe's Motor Speedway. Great chess writer Aron Nimzowitsch outlined in the classic work "My system" a number of middlegame positional principles such as "Rook on the 7th rank", "Undermining the pawn chain", "Restrain, blockade and destroy". Charlotte is home to the Charlotte Eagles of the United Soccer Leagues and plays host to the annual Wachovia Championship, an increasingly prestigious stop on the PGA Tour. Once a plan is formulated, it is then recommended to try and ensure the plan is feasible through the process of checking concrete variations. The WNBA Charlotte Sting have played in Charlotte since 1997. Most middlegame books recommend that once an assessment of the elements of the position has taken place, it is then recommended to try and form a "plan" to create an advantage. The franchise relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana in 2002 after bitter animosity between the team's fans and principal owner George Shinn led to slumping attendance and ill feelings towards the Hornets. In addition there are factors such as the two bishops which compensate each others weaknesses.

From 1988 to 2002, Charlotte hosted an NBA franchise named the Charlotte Hornets. A few common positional elements which high level Chess players routinely must assess include Pawn structure, King safety, Space, the presence of pawn islands, isolated pawns, backward pawns, doubled pawns. The team plays in the Charlotte Bobcats Arena, which opened in fall 2005 in downtown Charlotte. Other tactical elements include: zwischenzug, undermining, overloading, and interference. In 2004, Charlotte was awarded its second NBA expansion team named the Charlotte Bobcats. A discovered attack is an attack where a piece moves and uncovers a line for another piece which does the attacking. The NCAA football Meineke Car Care Bowl is played annually in December at Bank of America Stadium. Skewers are a kind of reverse pin where the more valuable piece is placed in front of a less important one.

The city has also been home to two Arena Football League teams, the Charlotte Rage and Carolina Cobras. Pins are used to prevent the movement of an enemy piece by threatening any pieces behind it should it move. Charlotte was home to the World Football League's Charlotte Hornets during 1974 and 1975. It usually is difficult for the other player to protect both of their pieces in one move. They have been in two other NFC Championship games: in 1996 (their second year) and 2006. A fork is a situation where a piece is moved such that it attacks (forks) two other pieces simultaneously. 1, 2004, the Panthers were defeated, 32-29, by the New England Patriots. But a "pinned piece" is a specific type of weakness in the opponents position, which when identified, could be exploited with a tactical combination.

In Super Bowl XXXVIII on Feb. For clarification, it should be noted that a "pin" is a tactical "method"- the act of pinning the opponents pieces. The team won the NFC Championship of the 2003-2004 NFL season when it beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 14-3, in Philadelphia. In many combinations of Alexander Alekhine, there is often a very subtle "quiet move" which breaks the Camel's back. The Panthers play in Bank of America Stadium, located in Uptown. Such common "methods" include Pins, Forks, Skewers, Discovered checks, Zuichenzugs, Deflections, Decoys, Sacrifices, Forcing moves, and even "Quiet moves" - which can be devastating moves that leave the oppponent in Zugzwang, or an otherwise lost position. Charlotte is home to the NFL's Carolina Panthers, which debuted in the league in 1995. Chess combinations often include a number of types of tactic "methods" which many middlegame books classify and provide examples of.

SouthPark has over 125 stores, many of which are unique to the Carolinas, including Tiffany & Co., Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Neiman Marcus, and Kate Spade. Such weaknesses are often created in the opponent's position in the first place by threats, provocative moves, and generally strong "positional play", etc. SouthPark Mall, the region's most upscale shopping center, is located about 5 miles south of uptown. These "weaknesses" can then be expoloitable with a chess combination that is often built out of a number of tactical "methods". Northlake features a variety of both upscale and conventional retailers. These types of "weaknesses" include: pinned pieces, overloaded pieces, weaknesses around the opponents king, weak squares, unprotected pieces, weak colour complexes, pieces not able to come back to defend the king, etc. Northlake was built to serve the population of rapidly growing north Charlotte and University City, as well as the nearby suburbs of Davidson and Huntersville. Usually they are present because the opponent has certain weaknesses in their position.

Northlake Mall opened in September 2005 and is located 8 miles north of uptown. Chess combinations and traps do not appear out of thin air. Efforts to reinvigorate the mall and surrounding area are currently being discussed. Such an advantageous exchange of pieces may, however, be a poor tactic if it leaves the opponent with an exploitable advantage in the way the pieces are positioned on the board. But while SouthPark has flourished and transformed itself into the region's source for high-end merchandise, Eastland has experienced a general decline over the years with many stores vacating the mall. For instance, to lose two pawns (2 points) in taking the opponent's knight (3 points) puts one ahead in material by one point. Eastland Mall was constructed in the mid-1970s as an alternative to then five-year-old SouthPark Mall; its claim to fame being an indoor skating rink in its central atrium. Instead, points are used by a player to consider whether he will come out materially better than his opponent in an exchange of pieces.

Concord Mills has over 200 outlet stores and a 24 screen theater within its nearly one-mile interior radius and is North Carolina's largest tourist attraction. The beginning player should be aware that points are not an inherent part of the game; there is no scoring and chess was played long before the idea of assigning points to pieces. Concord Mills is a sprawling retail and entertainment outlet mall about 10 miles northeast of uptown. exchange sacrifice), they are choosing to ignore the standard valuation of their pieces for positional or tactical gains. Carolina Place offers over 1.1 million square feet of retail, and its proximity to the South Carolina border draws many shoppers from the Palmetto state. If a player performs a sacrifice (e.g. Carolina Place Mall opened in the early 1990s and is located about 12 miles south of uptown in suburban Pineville, North Carolina. The actual value and importance of a piece will vary based upon its position and the stage of the game.

The metro area is also served by a 24-hour cable news channel, News 14 Carolina, available on Time Warner Cable. Since the king's loss ends the game it is invaluable. Television stations serving the market include:. Valuations differ slightly from book to book, but generally, queens are worth 9 points, rooks are worth 5, bishops and knights are worth 3, and pawns are worth 1. The Charlotte television market is the 27th largest in 2005, according to Nielsen Media Research. When taking and trading pieces, the chess piece point values becomes important. The dominant newspaper in the region is The Charlotte Observer. See the list of chess openings for more information.

There are also several alternative religious institutions in the Charlotte area, with the Unitarian Universalist Church perhaps being the most prominent and popular. It is often important for a player to castle (a special move that moves the king from the center of the board two squares towards one of the corners) to protect the king. Hindus meet at the Hindu Center or the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) temple. Hypermodernism advocates the control of the center not by using pawns but with distant pieces. The Charlotte area has five mosques: The Islamic Society of Greater Charlotte, Islamic Center of Charlotte, Masjid Ash-Shaheed, South Musallah, and the Islamic Society of Gastonia. Openings are often designed to take hold of the center of the board (e4, e5, d4 and d5), develop pieces, protect the king, and create a strong pawn structure. Jewish synagogues (Temple Beth El, Reform, Temple Israel, Conservative, and an Orthodox congregation) are located in Shalom Park on Providence Road. Chess openings are a sequence of moves, often memorized, which will help a player build up their position and prepare for the middlegame.

The Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America is headquartered in Charlotte, and both Reformed Theological Seminary and Gordon Conwell Seminary have campuses there. To better understand rules of chess, please see a sample chess game, which explains chess through a simple demonstration, move after move. Catholic congregations continue to expand with the growth of Latino immigration. This is useful for adjourning a game to resume later or for conveying chess problem positions without a diagram. Charlotte's Catholic and Jewish population surged during the 1980s when a series of corporate relocations brought thousands of northeasterners into the area. Apart from recording games, there is also a notation Forsyth-Edwards Notation for recording specific positions. In total, Charlotte lays claim to more than 700 places of worship. Of these, Portable Game Notation (PGN) is the most common.

The birthplace of Billy Graham, Charlotte was once known as the "City of Churches." Of those who practice a religion, most Charlotteans are Christian of various Protestant denominations, with (principally Southern) Presbyterians and Methodists being the two dominant denominations in the region. Several notations have emerged, based upon algebraic chess notation, for recording chess games in a format suitable for computer processing. Out of the total population, 13.8% of those under the age of 18 and 9.7% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line. This has been supplanted by the more compact algebraic chess notation. 10.6% of the population and 7.8% of families are below the poverty line. Until the 1970s, at least in English-speaking countries, chess games were recorded and published using descriptive chess notation. The per capita income for the city is $26,823. A draw can occur in many situations, including mutual agreement to draw, draw by insufficient material, stalemate, threefold repetition or the fifty move rule.

Males have a median income of $38,767 versus $29,218 for females. Either player may resign if the situation looks hopeless; also, games may end in a draw (tie). The median income for a household in the city is $46,975, and the median income for a family is $56,517. Chess games do not have to end in checkmate. The city's breakdown by race is as follows:. If a pawn advances all the way to the eighth rank, it can be promoted to any other piece, except a King. Charlotte's population is ethnically diverse. Alternatively, a pawn can move two squares forward if it has not moved yet and both squares are empty.

There are 230,434 housing units at an average density of 367.2/km² (951.2/mi²). Pawns capture differently than they move; they can capture an enemy piece on either of the two spaces adjacent to the space in front of them (i.e., the two squares diagonally in front of them), but cannot move to these spaces if they are vacant; conversely, a pawn can move forward one square, but only if that square is unoccupied. Figures from the more comprehensive 2000 census show Charlotte's population density to be 861.9/km² (2,232.4/mi²). If a player is unable to get their king out of check it is called checkmate and they have lost the game. The county's population is projected to reach 1 million in 2010. The king cannot be captured in regular chess, only put in check. As of 2004, census estimates show there are 594,359 people living within Charlotte's city limits, and 801,137 in Mecklenburg County. When a piece is captured (or taken), the attacking piece replaces the enemy piece on its square (en passant being the only exception).

Other major companies based in Charlotte include Belk, Meineke Autocare, Carlisle Companies, Compass Group USA, and Royal+SunAlliance. Enemy pieces cannot be passed, but they can be "captured". The following Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in the Charlotte metropolitan area:. One's own pieces ("friendly pieces") cannot be passed if they are in the line of movement, and a friendly piece can never replace another friendly piece. At 871 feet (265 m), the 60-story post-modern gothic tower is the 23rd tallest building in the United States, and the tallest skyscraper between Philadelphia and Atlanta. With the exception of the knight, pieces cannot jump over each other. Thanks to the continued expansion of the city's banking industry, the Charlotte skyline has mushroomed in recent years and boasts the Bank of America Corporate Center, designed by César Pelli. The knight can jump over occupied squares and moves two spaces horizontally and one space vertically (or vice versa), making an L shape; a knight in the middle of the board has eight squares it can move to.

Their headquarters, along with other regional banking and financial services companies, are located primarily in the uptown financial district. The king can move only one square horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. financial center, and both the nation's second largest (Bank of America) and fourth largest banks (Wachovia) call the city home. The queen is a combination of the rook and bishop (it can move any number of spaces diagonally, horizontally, or vertically). Charlotte has become a major U.S. The rook moves any number of spaces vertically or horizontally, while the bishop moves any number of spaces in any direction diagonally (meaning a bishop will always remain on the same color). South Carolina. Each kind of chess piece moves a different way.

North Carolina. The chess pieces should be set up on a standard chessboard with a white square in the near right hand corner. The Charlotte metropolitan area, formerly known as the Charlotte-Gastonia-Salisbury CSA (combined statistical area), extends across 2 states (North Carolina and South Carolina), and includes the following counties:. White always moves first and therefore has a slight advantage over black. Due to recent annexations, however, the city's population has grown to 651,101. The colors are chosen either by a friendly agreement, by a game of chance, or by a tournament director. The population of the City of Charlotte is 594,359 according to the US Census 2004 Estimate. When a game of chess begins, one player controls the sixteen white pieces while the other uses the sixteen black pieces.

The Metropolitan Combined Statistical Area of Charlotte-Gastonia-Salisbury, NC-SC, has a population, as of the 2005 census estimate, of 2,067,810. In particular Arimaa, which is played upon a standard 8×8 chessboard, is a game at which humans can beat the best efforts of programmers so far, even at fast time controls. See also: Charlotte metropolitan area. Kasparov's loss to Deep Blue has inspired the creation of chess variants in which human intelligence can still overpower computer calculation. A list of all Charlotte neighborhoods. Whilst too few games have been played to establish this, and neither Kramnik or Kasparov have played Hydra, Hydra's creators estimate its rating should be over 3000. Many residents were without power for several weeks and cleanup took months to complete. In June 2005, Hydra scored a decisive victory over the then 7th ranked GM Michael Adams winning five games and drawing one game in a six game match.

Passing through Charlotte with wind gusts nearing 100 mph, Hugo caused massive property damage and knocked out power to ninety eight percent of the population. Given the relative ease with which it beats the other programs, and the humans it has met, Hydra may be expected to beat any unaided human player in match play. In 1989, the city took a direct hit from Hurricane Hugo. Certainly it is very much comparable in terms of positions analysed per second. of precipitation annually, including some winter snow. The chess machine Hydra is the intellectual descendant of Deep Blue; and appears to be somewhat stronger than Deep Blue was. On average, Charlotte receives 43.51 in. In 2003, Kasparov drew both a six-game match with the computer program Deep Junior in February, and a four-game match against X3D Fritz in November.

In July, lows average 71 °F (22 °C) and highs average 90 °F (32 °C). In October 2002, Vladimir Kramnik drew in an eight-game match with the computer program Deep Fritz. In January, morning lows average around 32 °F (0 °C) and afternoon highs average 51 °F (11 °C). The six-game rematch in May 1997 was won by the machine (informally dubbed Deeper Blue) which was subsequently retired by IBM. The city has mild winters and hot, humid summers. Deep Blue shocked the world by winning the first game in Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1, but Kasparov convincingly won the match by winning three games and drawing two. Charlotte is located in North America's humid subtropical climate zone. Garry Kasparov, then ranked number one in the world, played a six-game match against IBM's chess computer Deep Blue in February 1996.

Catherine's and Rudisill gold mines. Nor has the study of chess proven particularly useful in the broader AI field; the methods used to play high-level chess are very different to the ones used for machine learning, machine vision, and the like. Uptown Charlotte, so named because it sits atop a long rise between two creeks, was built on the gunnies of the St. Moreover, as CPU speed and memory become less expensive, computer chess programs can search ever larger numbers of moves in the same amount of time, and store ever larger databases of opening and endgame positions. Charlotte constitutes most of Mecklenburg County in the Carolina Piedmont. However, it is important to note that the method by which computer programs play chess does not really resemble the way humans play chess — the computer basically just calculates the board position after every possible combination of legal moves and acts accordingly, whereas human masters act more from intuition and pattern recognition. The total area is 0.25% water. In blitz chess, they can beat the best human players; at regular time controls, however, battles between the very best chess programs and the very best human players have been tantalizingly finely balanced.

km.) of it is water. — have become extremely strong players. (1.6 sq. At first considered only a curiosity, the best chess playing programs — like Shredder, Fritz etc. mi. Serious work on machines that play chess has been going on since 1890, and chess-playing computer programs featured prominently in the artificial intelligence boom of the 1950s - 1970s. km.) of it is land and 0.6 sq. Although chess is not an Olympic sport, it has its own Olympiad, held every two years as a team event.

(627.5 sq. Most countries of the world have a national chess organization as well. mi. Chess's international governing body is FIDE, which has presided over the world championship matches for decades. Out of that, 242.3 sq. The most popular piece design, the "Staunton" set, was created by Nathaniel Cook in 1849, endorsed by Howard Staunton, a leading player of the time, and officially adopted by Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) in 1924. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 242.9 square miles (629 square kilometers). The current rules were finalized in the early 19th century, except for the exact conditions for a draw.

Novelist Carson McCullers wrote her best-known work, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, while a resident of the city. The game in Europe since that time has been almost the same as is played today. Polk(Pineville), independent filmmaker Ross McElwee, humorist Rich Hall, artist Romare Bearden, actress Berlinda Tolbert (of The Jeffersons) and Emmy-nominated actress Sharon Lawrence ("NYPD Blue"). By the end of the 15th century, the modern rules for the basic moves had been adopted from Italy: pawns gained the option of moving two squares on their first move and the en passant capture therewith, bishops acquired their modern move, and the queen was made the most powerful piece; consequently modern chess was referred to as "Queen's Chess" or "Mad Queen Chess". president James K. Early on, the pieces in European chess had limited movement; bishops could only move by jumping exactly two spaces diagonally (similar to the elephant in xiangqi), the queen could move only one space diagonally, pawns could not move two spaces on their first move, and there was no castling. Famous natives of Charlotte include evangelist Billy Graham, pop music stars K-Ci and JoJo of Jodeci, R&B singer Anthony Hamilton, R&B singer Sunshine Anderson, pro wrestling legend Ric Flair, actor Randolph Scott, U.S. Chess also found its way across Siberia into Alaska.

Most traces of antebellum Charlotte are long gone, and preservationists often struggle to maintain landmarks in the face of modern-minded boosters, a key reason Charlotte is often regarded as a "new" American city despite the fact that it is actually one of the oldest of the nation's larger cities. It was introduced into Spain by the Moors in the 10th century, and described in a famous 13th century manuscript covering chess, backgammon, and dice named the Libro de los juegos. Charlotte's penchant for looking ahead—a drive for economic development that kicked into particularly high gear during the mid-20th century—has created something of a historical apathy in the city. Chess eventually reached Russia via Mongolia, where it was played at the beginning of the 7th century. Today, Charlotte is the second largest banking center in the country after New York City. The game spread throughout the Islamic world after the Muslim conquest of Persia. Another hometown bank, First Union, experienced similar growth, and is now known as Wachovia. There is a theory that this name replacement happened because, before the game of chess came to Europe, merchants coming to Europe brought ornamental chess kings as curiosities and with them their name shāh, which Europeans mispronounced in various ways.

McColl transformed North Carolina National Bank (NCNB) into a formidable national player that, through a series of aggressive acquisitions, would eventually become Bank of America. Its name became shatranj, which continued in Spanish as ajedrez and in Greek as zatrikion, but in most of Europe was replaced by versions of the Persian word shāh = "king". The city's modern-day banking industry achieved prominence in the 1970s, largely under the leadership of financier Hugh McColl. From Persia it entered the Islamic world, where the names of its pieces largely remained in their Persian forms in early Islamic times. The mint was not reopened at the end of the war, but the building survives today, albeit in a different location, and now houses the Mint Museum of Art. The oldest known texts describing chess seem to indicate a bi-directional spread from the Persian empire. The Charlotte mint was active until 1861, when Confederate forces seized the mint facility at the outbreak of the Civil War. The entrance of chess into Europe, notably, is marked by a massive improvement in the powers of the queen.

Congress established a branch United States Mint here because of the gold deposits found in the area. One theory suggests that it migrated from India to Persia, where its terminology was translated into Persian, and its name changed to chatrang. In 1837 the U.S. Chess eventually spread westward to Europe and eastward as far as Japan, spawning variants as it went. Charlotte's history as a financial center is extensive. Joseph Needham and David Li are two of many scholars who have favored this theory. Uptown Charlotte is literally and figuratively built on gold mines. Another theory exists that chess arose from the similar game of Chinese chess, or at least a predecessor thereof, existing in China since the 2nd century BC.

The Reed Gold Mine was the nation's first, and it operated until 1912. The earliest mention of Chaturanga appears in the Indian classic, the Mahabharata, written circa 2,000 BC. The nation's original gold rush was on, and many veins of gold were subsequently found in the area. The most commonly held belief is that chess originated in India, where it was called Chaturanga. It was the first verified find of gold in the fledgling United States. Many countries claim to have invented the chess game in some incipient form. In 1799, 12-year-old Conrad Reed went fishing one spring morning and brought home a rock weighing about 17 pounds, which the family used as a doorstop for three years before it was recognized by a jeweller as gold. The most popular, in descending order by number of players, are xiangqi in China, shogi in Japan, and janggi in Korea.

Charlotte was an ideological hotbed of revolutionary sentiment, a legacy that endures today in the nomenclature of such landmarks as Independence Boulevard, Independence High School, Freedom Park and Freedom Drive. Many variants and relatives of chess are played throughout the world. It was a site of encampment for both the American and British main armies, and during a series of skirmishes between British troops and feisty Charlotteans the village earned the lasting nickname "Hornets Nest" from a frustrated Lord General Cornwallis. Chess is played both recreationally and competitively in clubs, tournaments, online, and by mail (correspondence chess). Charlotte played a critical role during the Revolutionary War. Chess is sometimes seen as an abstract wargame; as a "mental martial art", and teaching chess has been advocated as a way of enhancing mental prowess. Eleven days later the same 27 townsmen met to create and endorse the Mecklenburg Resolves, a set of laws to govern the newly independent town. Chess is one of the world's most popular games; it has been described not only as a game but also as an art and a science.

Though Thomas Jefferson would deny having borrowed content from the Mecklenburg declaration, his 1776 Declaration of Independence featured language similar to the Charlotte document (today there is no generally accepted historic proof of the so-called Meck-Dec, and many doubt it ever existed, yet the date of the Declaration appears on the North Carolina state flag). Nevertheless, the game is so complex that not even the best players can consider all contingencies: although only 64 squares and 32 pieces are on the board, the number of possible games that can be played far exceeds the number of atoms in the universe (see Shannon number). A copy was sent, though never officially presented, to the Continental Congress a year later. Chess is not a game of chance; it is based solely on tactics and strategy. On May 20, 1775, townsmen allegedly signed a proclamation that later became known as the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. . The loyalty to King George and his consort was short-lived, however. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent; this occurs when the opponent's king is threatened with capture, and no move can be made that would prevent it.

Polk, was named for Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the German wife of British King George III. One player controls the white pieces; the other player controls the black pieces (the player that controls white is always the first player to move). The village established by Polk, uncle of United States President James K. All pieces can remove opponent's pieces by landing on the space they occupy. The intersection of Trade and Tryon is known as The Square. Each player begins the game with 16 pieces which can move in defined directions (and in some instances, limited range) and can remove other pieces from the board: each player's pieces comprise eight pawns, two knights, two bishops, two rooks, one queen and one king. The trading path became Trade Street, and the Great Wagon Road was named Tryon Street, in honor of William Tryon, a royal governor of colonial North Carolina. It is played on a square board of eight rows (called ranks) and eight columns (called files), giving 64 squares of alternating colour, light and dark.

The crossroads, perched atop a long rise in the piedmont landscape, is the heart of modern Uptown Charlotte. Chess is an abstract strategy board game for two players. In 1755, early settler Thomas Polk built a home at the crossroads of an Indian trading path and the Great Wagon Road, which became the village of Charlotte Town, incorporated in 1768. Veselin Topalov (current). In the early part of the 18th century, the Great Wagon Road led settlers of Scots-Irish and German descent from Pennsylvania into the Carolina foothills. Rustam Kasimdzhanov. Route 21, and a second that ran east-west along what is now modern-day Trade Street. Ruslan Ponomariov.

Charlotte was founded in the mid-18th century at the intersection of two Indian trading paths, one of which ran north-south Great Wagon Road, and is followed closely today by U.S. Vishwanathan Anand. . Alexander Khalifman. A resident of Charlotte is referred to as a Charlottean (shar-la-TEE-uhn). Anatoly Karpov. Charlotte is one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation and is also the second-largest banking center in the country, trailing only New York City in terms of headquartered assets. FIDE champions (1993–present)