CHECKMATE
You have probably encountered the game of chess in your home or maybe seen it played in a movie. Perhaps you have even tried it yourself. This ancient game has two players. Each player moves 16 pieces on a checkerboard, trying to maneuver to capture a piece called the king. Once the king is captured, the game ends.
Believe it or not, chess has been played for hundreds of years! Historians can find records of the game being played in the north of India in the 6th and 7th centuries. Since it is so old, it’s hard to find out exactly how chess began, but there are two main legends.
The first legend tells the story of an Indian king named Shihram who loved games. In his kingdom, there was a mathematician named Sissa Ben Dahir. One day, the king ordered Dahir to invent a new game. The game that Dahir presented to the king was called Chaturanga, and it is the earliest version of what we now call chess. It took Dahir months to create this game, and when he finally presented it to the king, Shihram was so impressed that he insisted Dahir choose a reward.
Dahir requested that the king put one grain of wheat on the first square of the game’s board, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth, and continue doubling the amount of grain per square until each square was filled. The amount of grain on the last square is what Dahir wanted as his reward. When the king realized that all the wheat in the kingdom would not be enough to fill the board, he proclaimed that requesting such a prize was even more clever than inventing the game.
The second legend describes two half-brothers, Gav and Talhand, who were fighting for a kingdom’s throne when Talhand was killed in a battle. Gav knew that their mother would be heartbroken by Talhand’s death. He wanted her to know that he did not kill his brother, so he told her the story of the battle through a game played on a board. This board had multiple pieces that Gav moved around to show how Talhand, who was exhausted from fighting, eventually became trapped. The Persian word he used to describe Talhand’s situation was shah mat, which means a position of no escape. Shah mat eventually turned into the phrase checkmate, which players say today when they have beaten their opponent in chess.
Although we may never know how chess was created, the game soon spread throughout the entire world. It moved from India to Persia (modern-day Iran), where it grew in popularity. By the 10th century, Muslims from Persia brought the game to North Africa, and from there, it spread all over Europe. It became known as a military strategy game, and its popularity among rulers around the world gave it the nickname, “The Royal Game.”
Chess changed rules and forms often, which made it difficult for players from different cultures to compete. But in 1835, an Englishman named Nathaniel Cook designed the Staunton-pattern set, named after Howard Staunton, the world’s best chess player at the time. And in 1851, Staunton used his position as unofficial world champion to promote a uniform set of rules. This design and these rules are still in use today.
Thanks to this Indian invention, people worldwide can play one of the world’s oldest board games.