Triangulation

Endgame Origin: French (via Medieval Latin / Latin) advanced

A king-and-pawn endgame technique of maneuvering the king in a triangular path to lose a tempo and pass the move obligation to the opponent.

By taking three moves to reach a square the king could have reached in two, the triangulating player forces the opponent into zugzwang instead, flipping who must move first at a critical moment.

Etymology

From French (via Medieval Latin / Latin)French triangulation; Medieval Latin triangulationem; Latin triangulum , literally “a making triangular”

The English word triangulation is dated to 1809 in the sense “a making triangular,” with the surveying sense arriving by 1891. The chess sense is a direct metaphor from that geometry: the king moves along the vertices of a triangle to re-enter the same position but with the other side to move, i.e. it walks a three-square triangle to lose a tempo. No source consulted, including Edward Winter's standard reference on chess-term first usage, documents who first applied the word to chess.

Translations

Translations for this term haven't been added yet.

Related terms

Sources