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Background
A brief but revealing history of Chess
Sat Jul 16 22:59:14 MDT 2022
A racing game
In the 4th century Gupta empire of India, a board game called Ashtapada is
invented. It was a roll-and-move race game in which players tossed
sticks that gave results similar to dice,
trying to be the first to circuit an eight-by-eight board of squares.
Adaptation to war
In the fifth century people started using the board for a new game
called Chaturanga, which in Sanskrit means "four limbs". This was a
four-player war game whose pieces represented infantry, cavalry, war
elephants and ships. Each player had a piece representing their
commander, the raja.
Rules of the new game
The infantry moved like Chess pawns, marching
forward, but capturing diagonally. Cavalry used what we know as the
knight's move and war elephants moved like rooks. The raja could
move one square in any direction, just like a Chess king. Ships
moved two squares diagonally in any direction and could hop over a
blocking piece. It was convention that pairs of players would work
together to defeat the other two before turning on each other. To
reflect the caste system, infantry were not allowed to take
higher-ranked pieces and the raja could only be captured, not
killed. Players used throwing sticks to get dice-like results that
told them which type of piece they could move and this game was
gambled over.
Reducing randomness by accident
But the Hindu laws of Manu were against dice games, which deterred
many from playing. Buddhist leaders also disapproved. So people got
rid of the dice and let each player decide the piece to move.
Rules evolution
A later development was to swap the movement abilities of the ships
and war elephants and the number of players was reduced to two.
To accomplish this the number of each piece was doubled. But it was
weird to have two rajas, so one of them became prime minister, which
could only move one space diagonally. In the two-player context it
no longer made sense to have captures so it became about trapping
the raja, but not killing them, as that would be disrespectful.
Transportation
Merchants started carrying the game along the Silk Road to pass the time
on those long desert nights. At this time it went to China becoming
Chinese Chess and also eventually to Japan, becoming
Japanese Chess. It also went to Persia. The legend is that an
Indian ambassador arrived at the court of Shah Khusrau I (ruled
from 531-579) and presented a fancy set made of rubies and emeralds
along with a challenge to the wise men of Persia. After three days
of study, the wise men claimed they could win and promptly won
twelve consecutive matches against the ambassador.
New names and a new game
After this, Persians embraced the game, calling it "shatranj". They
added rules such as fixing the starting positions of the pieces as
before players could set them on their two rows as they liked. Of
course they renamed the raja the shah and started the idea of giving
a warning when the shah was captured by declaring "shah mat",
meaning "shah defeated", which we still use in the form "checkmate".
The prime minister was renamed the "farzin", the shah's bodyguard.
The landbound Persians turned the ships into war chariots.
A new look
Muslim armies invaded Persia in 636 and conquered it in fourteen
years. They took the game home, but did not like the pieces, which
were figures modeled after their real life equivalents. The
Caliphate opposed images of humans and animals. Thus, the pieces
changed in abstract shapes.
More transportation
In 711 Muslim armies crossed the Mediterranean Sea into Visigothic
Spain. The game had finally arrived in Europe. As a result of
cultural exchanges, by 760 the game was in the French kingdoms,
played by Swiss monks by the tenth century,
by 1050 in southern Germany and by the twelfth century, in
Scandinavia and the Isle of Lewis off Scotland.
New players
European nobility took the game and Chess masters became a new form
of entertainment at courts across Europe. It was considered
acceptable for men to visit women without a chaperone in order to
play Chess, so it became very popular with unmarried couples. In
several poems, including Tristan and Iseult, couples fell in
love while playing Chess. Even the pope supported the game because,
he said, after it was over all the pieces go back into the box
together, none better than the other, just as all are equal before
God.
Rules disagreements
People started changing the rules. Different rulesets developed
in each kingdom. In Germany some pawns could move two spaces on
their first move instead of one. In Northern Italy the king could
leap over pieces for his first move. In England players could choose
between a short and a long version.
Pieces change
People were not really familiar with war elephants so they started
changing these pieces. In France they became fools or jesters. In
Germany they became messengers. In Italy they became standard
bearers. In England they became bishops.
Shortening play
In the late 1300s the game was losing steam because it seemed so
slow and long. The armies would slowly march toward the middle.
Sometimes players would even agree to each make multiple moves
simultaneously, just to save time. At first they tried enlarging the
board, but it just made things worse. Some rearranged the starting
positions, but that did not help either. In Castile they tried
re-introducing dice, which increased ease and speed, but lowered the
strategic depth. Finally the solution came in the form of enabling
the pieces to move farther. The bishop could now move any distance
diagonally, though it lost its hopping ability. Pawns could move two
spaces on their first move and the en passant rule came in to
fix the problem of players trying to use it to evade capture. Most
importantly, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
the prime minister or vizier became the queen and could
move any number of spaces in any direction. In 1536 this change was
new in Germany, but by eighty years later the old rule had been
forgotten.
A new look
For the first time the colors of the board squares alternated to
make the game easier to follow. Around 1100 someone in France
grabbed some pieces from Backgammon, brought them to a
Chess
board and created a game that eventually became Checkers.
New players
With the rise of the middle class, the game gained new players who
met in clubs and coffeehouses. Clubs opened in cities around the
world. In Paris, Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin and Bonaparte played.
Marx met Engels at such a club.
New conventions
As French and British players began to compete against one another,
they discovered different conventions. British players complained
that the French continually offered their opinions during the game.
Prussian players, however, complained that British players were
boring, taking much too long to make their moves.
A new look
Even worse, the look of the pieces differed widely. Some used
figures that looked like what they were supposed to be, but others
used abstract shapes. Or there were sets that were somewhere in
between. Some designs were problematic as well.
The British pieces obscured the board too much.
The pieces in the French set were tall and thin to help distinguish them and not
obscure the board, but were too prone to falling over.
In 1849 John Jaques & Son, a London game manufacturer, created
the Staunton set, which is what most people know as standard today.
It's named for Howard Staunton, a well known British player.
The bases echo classical balusters and the horse draws inspiration
from the chariot of the goddess Selene of Parthenon Frieze (Elgin
Marbles). Each piece was thin enough to avoid obscuring the board,
but also sturdy enough not to fall over easily.
Heightened competition
In 1851 London hosted the first official international competition,
which became a regular event. In 1924, FIDE, the world Chess
federation, declared the Staunton design the standard design for all
international tourneys. This also led to the disappearance of local
variants, even in India, where the game had finally returned home.
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