History of Chess
The history of chess can be traced back nearly 1500 years, although it's early origins are uncertain. The earliest predecessor of the game probably originated in India, before the 6th century AD. Later, when the Mughals had conquered India, ruling most of it's parts, they became fond of the game. In this way the game spread to Persia. When the Arabs conquered Persia, chess was taken up by the Muslim world and subsequently spread to Southern Europe. In Europe, chess evolved into roughly its current form in the 15th century. In the second half of the 19th century, modern chess tournament play began, and the first official World Chess Championship was held in 1886. The 20th century saw great leaps forward in chess theory and the establishment of the World Chess Federation (FIDE). In 1997, a computer first beat a chess world champion in the famous Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov match, ushering in an era of computer domination. Since then, computer analysis – which originated in the 1970s with the first programmed chess games on the market – has contributed to much of the development in chess theory and has become an important part of preparation in professional human chess. Later developments in the 21st century made the use of computer analysis far surpassing the ability of any human player accessible to the public. Online gaming , which first appeared in the mid-1990s, also became popular in the 21st century. A 2012 survey found that "chess players now make up one of the largest communities in the world: 605 million adults play chess regularly". Chess is played at least once a year by 12% of British people, 15% of Americans, 23% of Germans, 43% of Russians, and 70% of Indian people.
Chess in India
The earliest precursor of modern chess is a game called chaturanga, which flourished in India by the 6th century, and is the earliest known game to have two essential features found in all later chess variations—different pieces having different powers (which was not the case with checkers and Go), and victory depending on the fate of one piece, the king of modern chess. According to Indian historians, chess was in vented by Chanakya (Indian philosopher) for improving on strategies for wars. A common theory is that India's development of the board, and chess, was likely due to India's mathematical enlightenment involving the creation of the number zero. Other game pieces (speculatively called "chess pieces") uncovered in archeological findings are considered as coming from other, distantly related board games, which may have had boards of 100 squares or more.
Spreading of Chess by colonization of India.
During the rule of the Mughal Empire in India the British, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish and the French had arrived in India to trade. The British seemed to be the most powerful among them all. By the time the last Mughal Emperor was dead, the English East India Company had already conquered large parts of India. This resulted in Chess becoming famous all over Europe and British-colonized areas. In Europe a new wave of chess player arrived sparkling it to make way for it to become an international sport.
