Chess

What is the history, and how does it work?

Chess is a very popular (and fun) game of strategy. Each player gets 16 pieces to play with, and play alternates between the two people. But how does it work, and where does it come from?

How it works

Chess is played on an 8 by 8 board, which is also checked with white and black squares.

There are seven different pieces, each piece having a unique movement and capturing style. Let’s look at each of these pieces.

The rook is a very simple piece, being able to move up, down, left, or right, as far as it wants. The only limit to the rook is that it can’t jump over other pieces, or leave the chess board. The rook captures in the same way. However, it must stop at the captured piece’s square. You start with two rooks, starting on the corners of the board.

The bishop is a piece that can only move diagonally and captures in the same way. It cannot jump over other pieces. Note that a bishop is only able to move on one colour. If it starts on a white square, it cannot go to a black square, and vice versa. For this reason, you start with two bishops, one on each colour.

The queen is the most powerful piece on the board, being a combination of both a rook and a bishop, meaning that it can go on the diagonals and the rows and columns, and captures in the same way.  The queen is powerful, but it cannot jump over pieces.

The king is the most important piece on the board. However, the king can only move one square at a time in any direction. That makes it very vulnerable. If the king is being attacked, you must respond immediately. You can’t wait and do something else. If the king is being attacked, that is called “check.” If the king is in check and can’t escape, it’s called “checkmate,” and it means that you lose the game.

The knight is probably the weirdest piece on the board. It move in an L pattern, meaning that it moves two squares down, and one square left or right. Or two squares left or right, and one square up or down. The knight is the only piece that can jump over another piece.

The pawn is the weakest piece, as it can only move one square forward at a time. If the pawn hasn’t moved from the starting position, it’s allowed to move two squares. The pawn captures one square diagonally. Even though the pawn is the weakest piece, it can be promoted to a higher piece by making it to the other side of the board. When that brave pawn makes it to the other side of the board, it can be promoted to any other piece (but the pawn cannot remain as a pawn, or promote to a king.)

Okay, that’s how you play, but what is the history?

History of chess

The history of chess goes back almost 1500 years. The game originated in northern India in the 6th century AD and spread to Persia. When the Arabs conquered Persia, chess was taken up by the Muslim world and subsequently, through the Moorish conquest of Spain, spread to Southern Europe. But in early Russia, the game came directly from the Khanates (muslim territories) to the south.

In Europe, the moves of the pieces changed in the 15th century. The modern game starts with these changes. In the second half of the 19th century, modern tournament play began. Chess clocks were first used in 1883, and the first world chess championship was held in 1886. The 20th century saw advances in chess theory, and the establishment of the World Chess Federation (FIDE). (If you are wondering why the acronym is FIDE and not WCF, that’s because FIDE is the French acronym: “Fédération Internationale des Échecs”, or the “International Federation of Chess.”) Chess engines (programs that play chess), and chess databases became important. 

The precursors of chess originated in northern India during the Gupta empire, where its early form in the 6th century was known as Chaturanga. This translates as ‘the four divisions’, meaning infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and chariotry, represented by the pieces that would evolve into the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook, respectively.

According to Wikipedia: “In Sassanid Persia around 600 the name became Chatrang and the rules were developed further, and players started calling Shah! (Persian for ‘King’) when threatening the opponent’s king, and Shah mat! (Persian for ‘the king is finished’) when the king could not escape from attack.  That’s where the word “Checkmate” came from, by the way. These exclamations persisted in chess as it traveled to other lands.  The game was taken up by the Muslim world after the Islamic conquest of Persia, with the pieces largely retaining their Persian names; in Arabic “māt” or “māta” مَاتَ means “died”, “is dead”. In Arabic, the game became Shatranj. In all other languages, the name of the game is derived either from shatranj or from shah. Shatranj made its way via the expanding Islamic Arabian empire to Europe. It also spread to the Byzantine empire, where it was called zatrikion. Chess appeared in Southern Europe during the end of the first millennium, often introduced to new lands by conquering armies, such as the Norman Conquest of England. Previously little known, chess became popular in Northern Europe when figure pieces were introduced, In the 14th century, Timur played an enlarged variation of the game which is commonly referred to as Tamerlane chess. This complex game involved each pawn having a particular purpose, as well as additional pieces.”

The sides are conventionally called White and Black. But, in earlier European chess writings, the sides were often called Red and Black because those were the commonly available colours of ink when handwriting drawing a chess game layout. In such layouts, each piece was represented by its name, often abbreviated (e.g. “ch’r” for French “chevalier” = “knight”).

The social value attached to the game – seen as a prestigious pastime associated with nobility and high culture – is clear from the expensive and exquisitely made chessboards of the medieval era. The game found mention in the vernacular and Latin language literature throughout Europe, and many works were written on or about chess between the 12th and the 15th centuries. 

The practice of playing chess for money became so widespread during the 13th century that Louis IX of France issued an ordinance against gambling in 1254. This ordinance turned out to be unenforceable and was largely neglected by the common public, and even the courtly society, which continued to enjoy the now-prohibited chess tournaments uninterrupted.

Changes to the game

The queen and bishop remained relatively weak until between 1475 AD and 1500 AD, probably in Spain, or perhaps Portugal, France or Italy, the queen’s and bishop’s modern moves started and spread, making chess more modern. The first document showing the Queen (or Dama) moving this way is an allegorical poem written in Catalan in Valencia in the 1470s. This form of chess got such names as “Queen’s Chess” or “Mad Queen Chess” . This led to much more value being attached to the previously minor tactic of pawn promotion. Checkmate became easier and games could now be won in fewer moves. These new rules quickly spread throughout Western Europe and in Spain, with the exception of the rules about stalemate, which were finalized in the early 19th century. The modern move of the queen may have started as an extension of its older ability to once move two squares with jump, diagonally or straight. In some areas, the queen could also move like a knight.

An Italian player, Gioacchino Greco, regarded as one of the first true professionals of the game, authored an analysis of a number of composed games that illustrated two differing approaches to chess. His work was influential in popularizing chess, and demonstrated many theories regarding game play and tactics.

The first full work dealing with the various winning combinations was written by François-André Danican Philidor of France, regarded as the best chess player in the world for nearly 50 years, and published in the 18th century. He wrote and published L’Analyse des échecs (The Analysis of Chess), an influential work which appeared in more than 100 editions. 

Competitions

Competitive chess became visible in 1834 with the La Bourdonnais-McDonnell matches, and the 1851 London Chess tournament raised concerns about the time taken by the players to deliberate their moves. On recording time it was found that players often took hours to analyze moves, and one player took as much as two hours and 20 minutes to think over a single move at the London tournament. The following years saw the development of speed chess, five-minute chess and the most popular variant, a version allowing a bank of time to each player in which to play a previously agreed number of moves, e.g. two hours for 30 moves. In the final variant, the player who made the predetermined number of moves in the agreed time received additional time budget for his next moves. Penalties for exceeding a time limit came in form of fines and forfeiture. Since fines were easy to bear for professional players, forfeiture became the only effective penalty; this added “lost on time” to the traditional means of losing such as checkmate and resigning.

In 1861 the first time limits, using sandglasses, were employed in a tournament match at Bristol, England. The sandglasses were later replaced by pendulums. Modern clocks, consisting of two parallel timers with a small button for a player to press after completing a move, were later employed to aid the players. A tiny latch called a flag further helped settle arguments over players exceeding time limit at the turn of the 19th century.

Position analysis also became particularly popular in the 19th century. Many leading players were also accomplished analysts, including Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov and Jan Timman. Digital clocks appeared in the 1980s.

Another problem that arose in competitive chess was when adjourning a game for a meal break or overnight. The player who moved last before adjournment would be at a disadvantage, as the other player would have a long period to analyze before having to make a reply when the game was resumed. Preventing access to a chess set to work out moves during the adjournment would not stop him from analyzing the position in his head. Various strange ideas were attempted, but the eventual solution was the “sealed move”. The final move before adjournment is not made on the board but instead is written on a piece of paper which the referee seals in an envelope and keeps safe. When the game is continued after adjournment, the referee makes the sealed move and the players resume. 

Recent rule changes

There have been no recent changes to the moves of the pieces, but the wording of some rules were changed. Publicity showed that the old wording of two rules allowed unintended types of moves:

• The promotion rule was found to say that a pawn is to be promoted to “a piece” of unspecified colour, thus including an enemy piece (thus on occasion blocking the enemy king in, or preventing stalemate by giving the opponent something to move).
• The castling rule was found to allow (White) Ke1–e3 and Re8–e2, and (Black) Ke8–e6 and Re1–e7, if “the rook had not been moved” as a rook because it had been a pawn underpromoted on e8/e1.

The wording of both rules was changed to forbid the unintended allowed moves.

In recent times, more ways to lose have been brought in:

• The 1851 London Chess tournament showed the need for time control, resulting in ability to “lose on time”.
• If a mobile phone or other electrical device generates sound, the player thereby loses; but if the other player cannot win by any possible sequence of legal moves, the result is a draw.

Famous games

Probably the most famous game is called the Immortal Game of 1851, played my Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kiseritzky. Anderssen as playing white, and gave up both rooks and a bishop, then his queen, checkmating with his three remaining minor pieces; both knights and a Bishop.

Here is Wikipedia again: “In this game, Anderssen won despite sacrificing a bishop (on move 11), both rooks (starting on move 18), and the queen (on move 22) to produce checkmate against Kiseritzky, who lost only three pawns. He offered both rooks to show that two active pieces are worth a dozen inactive pieces.”

Another game that Andersson played was called the Evergreen Game, against Jean Dufresne in 1852. In this one, he sacrifices Both knights, the queen, and a rook, to end with a checkmate involving a pawn and both bishops. He was down by 12 points when he won this game.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, chess is a very old game dating back to the 6th century AD. It has changed over time, and is now a game that anybody can play. In my opinion, it is a very fun game that everybody should try out!