Where was chess invented and what did it look like

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:46

Chess is one of the most intellectual games invented in the history of mankind. It trains logic, endurance, teaches to calculate each move and adapt to the changing situation on the playing field. The game has more than a thousand years of history, and it is already difficult to answer the question of where chess was invented with scientific certainty, but we will still try to at least slightly open the veil of secrecy.

One legend is associated with the emergence of chess. According to this legend, the game appeared about a thousand years before our era, being the invention of a certain Indian mathematician, who also invented such a mathematical operation as exponentiation. What kind of game it was, this legend does not say, but it is mentioned that a board divided into 64 cells was used to play it. The grateful sheikh, who fell in love with this game, invited him to choose any reward he wanted. Then he asked for a certain number of grains that would fit on the game board, if in each next cell they were placed twice as much as in the previous one. The sheikh recklessly agreed, but after the final calculations it turned out thatthat he owed the sage more than a hundred cubic kilometers of grain (for the sake of accuracy, let's say that the last cell should have had 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains, so the sum of grains from all cells should be a truly astronomical number).

If you believe the above legend, then the answer to the question of where chess was invented is unequivocal - in India. However, archaeological excavations show that a similar game existed in Egypt several thousand years before our era, so scientists still cannot accurately name the country where chess was invented. What did the first chess look like, what were its rules, how did a chess game go in those distant times?

If we turn to the history of chess, we will see that not only the rules, the names of the pieces and the game itself differed, but also the arrangement of chess. Initially, the game was designed for four players, each with four pawns and one knight, bishop, rook and king. The pieces of each player were lined up in the corner of the game board of 64 cells. They played two on two, went in turn, each throwing dice, due to which there was some element of chance in the game. When playing only two players, the arrangement of pieces was similar to modern chess (one of the kings changed to the figure of the vizier - the king's adviser). Victory counted:

1. With the complete destruction of all enemy troops.
2. When capturing the enemy king (when playing heads up).
3. When destroying all enemy troops except the king.

This Indian game was called Chaturanga ("four sides"). Once in Persia, it was transformed into a new game - shatranj. From Persia, shatranj migrated to Western Europe, where it turned into modern chess, from where it gradually spread throughout the world, becoming the most popular intellectual game of all time.

This concludes our journey in search of the country where chess was invented. We hope you enjoyed reading this as much as we enjoyed writing it.