The brief history of chess

Keywords: Rules; Customs; Designs; Women

Introduction

The game of chess is believed to have originated in ancient India, more than a millennium ago, from a game called Chaturanga. The game then spread to Persia, where it was adopted by Muslims, who later brought it to Spain and the Mediterranean region. Numerous studies and a recent one has concluded that chess is approximately 1,500 years old.

📸 A timeline of key events in chess

Rules

At the eighth rank, pawns could no longer move. Before the Middle Ages, pawns could only become queens. Bishops always moved in a diagonal direction. At first, bishops could move two squares. The Queen was the weakest piece when it was first made. The first time it moved, it could go two spaces in any direction. After that, it could only move diagonally. She didn't get power until the end of the 1400s. Stalemate has changed over the history of chess. Before the 15th century, whoever forced a stalemate was the winner. Before the 1300s, there were three ways to win chess: checkmate, having your opponent resign, or taking all of his/ her pieces (minus the king). In the 1300s, you had to checkmate your opponent instead of taking all of their pieces to win a game of chess. Before the 1880s, there was no rule that said if the same position was played three times in a row, the game was a tie. The rule that all winnable endgames could be won in less than 50 moves was broken a few times in the 20th century. With these exceptions, endgames could have up to 100 moves. This number was cut to 75 in 1989 and 50 in 2001 (revised in 2018), no matter what position you were in at the endgame. In the 1800s, time was first used in games. In 1889, whites always played the first moves.

Quiz

A short quiz was made in summary of the timeline of the change of the rules of chess, prior to posting this blog. The quiz consisted of approximately 23 participants who took part in the quiz. The results bellow show that the average performance was only roughly 30% meaning that the average chess player most likely are unaware of these changes of rules in the past:

📑Pie chart to show the average and highest performance of the quiz

Pie chart shows that the average score across all 23 participants only amounted to 3.04 whilst the highest score was at an ecstatic 9 which shows that the average chess practitioner may not be aware of the changes of chess rules

📑Bar chart to show the average, highest and lowest performance of the quiz

The bar chart also include some statistics on the lowest performance, results that some people achieved only 0 on the test

• A problem with this test is that there were not enough participants to test as well as the fact that checking back with some of the attempts, the people achieved a score of 0 were the ones who timed out (the link has a 5 minute timer), meaning that those results really shouldn't have counted towards the averages, which means that the actual average could have been a bit higher, but on average, most people got around 4-5 out of a possible 10 points.

Link to the quiz: https://take.supersurvey.com/Q7THM25K7 

History of chess pieces design

The majority of the earliest chess pieces were made in India, and their names were Wazir, fil, Asp, Rukh, and Payada (you can try to research or guess what these names correspond to today's pieces!). Other Middle Eastern regions, such as Persia and the Arabian Peninsula, were responsible for the development of the chess pieces. Uzbekistan was the location where the earliest malls were discovered (The were called Chatrang). They comprised of seven pieces that included a king and his crew (King, Chariot, Vizier, Horse, Elephant and the two foot soldier). It is believed to be older than 1200 years ago.

📸Chatrang pieces discovered in Uzbekistan

Brief outlook of women in chess

The separation between men and women in testing dates back to the year 1500, when the queen was introduced to appear to have distinct abilities within the game. The belief that chess became faster and more exciting over time suggested that it encouraged a more masculine pursuit. During the period of chess's evolution, women were typically confined to the home and worked as servants. However, this did not prevent the advancement of women in chess. In 1847, for instance, the first women-only chess clubs were established in the Netherlands. In addition, the first chess book was written by a woman in the United Kingdom during the 1860s, and the first women's tournament was sponsored in 1884, also in the United Kingdom.

📸 First women chess tournament in Sussex 1884

Summary