A brief history of chess - Alex Gendler

The attacking infantry advances steadily, their elephants already having broken the defensive line. The king tries to retreat, but enemy cavalry flanks him from the rear. Escape is impossible. But this isn’t a real war– nor is it just a game. Over the roughly one-and-a-half millennia of its existence, chess has been known as a tool of military strategy, a metaphor for human affairs, and a benchmark of genius. While our earliest records of chess are in the 7th century, legend tells that the game’s origins lie a century earlier. Supposedly, when the youngest prince of the Gupta Empire was killed in battle, his brother devised a way of representing the scene to their grieving mother. Set on the 8x8 ashtapada board used for other popular pastimes, a new game emerged with two key features: different rules for moving different types of pieces, and a single king piece whose fate determined the outcome. The game was originally known as chaturanga– a Sanskrit word for "four divisions." But with its spread to Sassanid Persia, it acquired its current name and terminology– "chess," derived from "shah," meaning king, and “checkmate” from "shah mat," or “the king is helpless.” After the 7th century Islamic conquest of Persia, chess was introduced to the Arab world. Transcending its role as a tactical simulation, it eventually became a rich source of poetic imagery. Diplomats and courtiers used chess terms to describe political power. Ruling caliphs became avid players themselves. And historian al-Mas’udi considered the game a testament to human free will compared to games of chance. Medieval trade along the Silk Road carried the game to East and Southeast Asia, where many local variants developed. In China, chess pieces were placed at intersections of board squares rather than inside them, as in the native strategy game Go. The reign of Mongol leader Tamerlane saw an 11x10 board with safe squares called citadels. And in Japanese shogi, captured pieces could be used by the opposing player. But it was in Europe that chess began to take on its modern form. By 1000 AD, the game had become part of courtly education. Chess was used as an allegory for different social classes performing their proper roles, and the pieces were re-interpreted in their new context. At the same time, the Church remained suspicious of games. Moralists cautioned against devoting too much time to them, with chess even being briefly banned in France. Yet the game proliferated, and the 15th century saw it cohering into the form we know today. The relatively weak piece of advisor was recast as the more powerful queen– perhaps inspired by the recent surge of strong female leaders. This change accelerated the game’s pace, and as other rules were popularized, treatises analyzing common openings and endgames appeared. Chess theory was born. With the Enlightenment era, the game moved from royal courts to coffeehouses. Chess was now seen as an expression of creativity, encouraging bold moves and dramatic plays. This "Romantic" style reached its peak in the Immortal Game of 1851, where Adolf Anderssen managed a checkmate after sacrificing his queen and both rooks. But the emergence of formal competitive play in the late 19th century meant that strategic calculation would eventually trump dramatic flair. And with the rise of international competition, chess took on a new geopolitical importance. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union devoted great resources to cultivating chess talent, dominating the championships for the rest of the century. But the player who would truly upset Russian dominance was not a citizen of another country but an IBM computer called Deep Blue. Chess-playing computers had been developed for decades, but Deep Blue’s triumph over Garry Kasparov in 1997 was the first time a machine had defeated a sitting champion. Today, chess software is capable of consistently defeating the best human players. But just like the game they’ve mastered, these machines are products of human ingenuity. And perhaps that same ingenuity will guide us out of this apparent checkmate.

Channel: TED-Ed

Views: 4,768,311

Rating: 4.9457388 out of 5

Keywords: chess, game of chess, chess strategies, chess moves, history, india, ancient india, gupta empire, ashtapada board, chaturanga, checkmate, persia, al-Mas’udi, silk road, china, mongols, Tamerlane, shogi, sacrifice the queen, enlightenment, Immortal Game of 1851, immortal game chess, Adolf Anderssen, cold war, soviet union, IBM, deep blue, deep blue ibm, Garry Kasparov, technology, Teded, TED Ed, TED-Ed, TED, deep blue ibm vs kasparov, animation, alex gendler, remus & kiki, Ted Education

Id: YeB-1F-UKO0

Length: 5min 40sec (340 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/theRealSteinberg]

How do people get the board oriented wrong _more_ than 50% of the time? Are they doing it on purpose? Is it some sort of joke only actual chess players are not in on?

[u/kleini]

What was meant with the closing thoughts?

If anything, computer programs like AlphaZero are showing computers can become even better at chess when self-learning as opposed to being programmed directly by humans.

[u/vteckickedin]

How could they not mention Fischer? Russian dominance ended by a computer? Bah

[u/Todojaw21]

"Chess is a strategy game, which was made sometime during the 1980s, on the Nintendo Entertainment system"

[u/moreobviousname]

The board is wrong in that video’s thumbnail - the light square should be in the bottom right.

[u/zeekar]

That first time they put the elephant down and the animation shows its movement, it should stop at two squares out. Elephants/bishops weren't able to move further than that until much later..

[u/SemolinaChessNut]

It was never used as a tool for military strategy!