John Littlewood (chess player) John Littlewood (chess player) John Eric Littlewood (25 May 1931 – 16 September 2009) was for many years a leading British chess player and took the title of national senior champion in 2006. Perhaps his most famous game was the one he lost against the world champion Mikhail Botvinnik at the Hastings International Chess Congress 1961/2. Littlewood launched a fearsome attack which Botvinnik was able to defend only by means of a tactical finesse. Botvinnik chose to include the game in his autobiographical "Best Games 1947–1970". John Littlewood was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire in 1931, the fourth of his eleven
Chess rules were most recently revised in 2017. Chess is played on a square board of eight rows (called ' and denoted with numbers "1" to "8") and eight columns (called ' and denoted with letters "a" to "h"). The colors of the 64 squares alternate and are referred to as "light" and "dark" squares. The chessboard is placed with a light square at the right-hand end of the rank nearest to each player. By convention, the game pieces are divided into white and black sets, and the players are referred to as "White" and "Black" respectively. Each player begins the