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History of chess
Chess is about 1,400 years old. It crossed a continent, changed its rules once, survived computers beating its best players, and is now played online by hundreds of millions of people.
Chaturanga: the ancestor in India
The earliest known ancestor of chess is chaturanga, which flourished in India around the 6th and 7th centuries. The Sanskrit word means "four divisions", the four parts of an army: infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots. These became the pawn, knight, bishop and rook. The game also had a king and a counsellor, who became the queen. Its aim was already to capture or trap the king.
Shatranj in Persia and the Islamic world
From India the game went west to Persia, where it was called chatrang and, after the Arab conquest, shatranj. It spread across the Islamic world, and the words "check" and "checkmate" come from the Persian shah (king) and shah mat (the king is helpless). Players wrote the first chess books and puzzles in this period. The pieces on the board moved slowly: the vizier (queen) could step only one square diagonally and the elephant (bishop) leapt exactly two.
Chess reaches Europe
Muslims took the game to North Africa, Sicily and Spain by the 10th century, and trade and war carried it across Europe. By about the year 1000 it was widespread. Europeans changed the names and pictures: the elephant became a bishop, the chariot a rook, the counsellor the queen.
The modern rules, about 1475
Around 1475 to 1500, probably in Spain, the queen and bishop gained their modern, long-range moves. This turned a slow game into the fast, attacking one we play today, and castling and the pawn's double step settled into their familiar forms at about the same time. A Catalan poem of 1475, Scachs d'amor, is the earliest document showing the queen's modern move. The first recorded tournament was held in Spain in 1575 at the royal court at El Escorial.
Clubs, tournaments and champions
- The "Romantic" era of the 18th and 19th centuries favoured spectacular attacks and gambits.
- The Staunton pattern, designed in the 1840s and named after the English player Howard Staunton, became the standard set of pieces, and the first international tournament was held in London in 1851.
- Time limits first appeared in tournament matches in Bristol in 1861, and clocks soon followed.
- 1886: Wilhelm Steinitz won the first official World Championship match, and he is considered the first world champion.
- 1924: FIDE, the International Chess Federation, was founded in Paris and took over the title from the 1940s.
The twentieth century: Fischer and the Cold War
Soviet players dominated world chess for decades. In 1972, in Reykjavik, American Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky in a match watched around the world, and chess became front-page news. Fischer later invented the shuffled-start variant now called Chess960; see variants and time controls.
Computers
Chess was one of the first problems programmers tried to solve. In 1997 IBM's Deep Blue defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match, the first time a computer beat a reigning champion under match conditions. Today, even a phone app can beat any human, and engines are used by all strong players to study.
The online era
Online chess began in the mid-1990s and grew into a mass hobby in the 21st century. Magnus Carlsen of Norway became world champion in 2013, and chess boomed again in the early 2020s as millions of people learned it at home. Today you can play a stranger across the world in seconds. Online play is also what makes a game like ChessMingle possible, where you talk to your opponent while you play; see play chess online.
Famous champions along the way
- Capablanca (champion 1921): known for effortless, simple-looking positional play.
- Botvinnik (champion 1948): the first of the long Soviet line, and a pioneer of scientific training.
- Kasparov (champion 1985, at 22): then the youngest ever champion, and the man who faced Deep Blue.
- Carlsen (champion 2013): held the title for a decade and was the world's top-rated player for years.
The title has passed through many hands since, and each new generation is younger and more reliant on computer preparation than the last.
Why chess lasted
The rules are small and the game is deep. Fourteen centuries on, nobody has found the end of it. You can start learning with how to play chess.
Frequently asked questions
Where was chess invented?
The earliest ancestor, chaturanga, was played in India around the 6th and 7th centuries. The game then spread to Persia and the Islamic world and on to Europe.
When did chess get its modern rules?
Around 1475 to 1500, probably in Spain, when the queen and bishop gained their long-range moves. The rules have changed very little since.
Who was the first world chess champion?
Wilhelm Steinitz, who won the first official World Chess Championship match in 1886.