Who Invented Chess?
Chess is one of the most important table games in the world today.
There is no exactitude as to who I think this game, but the most accepted story regarding the creation of chess is the one that places its origin in India around the sixth century. A man named Susa Ben Dahir or Sisa is considered the inventor. This young Hindu is believed to have invented chess to help a king of India, who was quite ill and depressed. Doctors advised the king to distract his mind, but he found nothing to entertain him.
For this reason, Sisa designed a board game very similar to chess and presented it to the king, who loved it. Since he could forget while playing his ailments and problems, due to how entertaining he was. The king, as he was very happy with the invention, told Sisa that he could ask for whatever he wanted as a reward. But then in the palace, they began to do the accounts of what they actually had to pay Sisa.
All this money was impossible to gather since not even adding all the wealth and lands of the king could that sum of money be reached. Sisa showed the king her sagacity and he could not pay her what she asked for. The game of chess as we know it today was originally called Chaturanga, which means between four. This name alluded to the 4 weapons of the Indian army: horses, chariots, elephants, and infantry.
When the game began to be played in the West, the pieces changed and became rooks, knights, bishops, bishops or pawns, in addition to the queen and the king. Before chess was invented, a similar game was played in the Mesopotamian area around 4000 years before Christ.
It is estimated that chess arrived in Europe between the years 700 and 900 through the conquest of Spain over Islamic countries.
Vikings and Crusaders returning from the Holy Land were already playing chess. The countries where chess was most played in the Middle Ages were Spain and Italy. The game slightly changed its way of playing it since before the queen and the bishop were weak pieces that could only advance from square to square. But during the 16th and 17th centuries, the value of the queen’s piece was changed, giving it more importance and power in the game. Previously it was played with the rules that the Arabs had established.
Chess in ancient times was played mostly by aristocrats, religious orders, and groups of nobles but then it became popular and people began to play it in all kinds of places until they reached cafes and universities, squares, etc. as it currently happens. The chess pieces were made with different materials according to the century in which it was. Among which, chess games with pieces of stone, bone, wood, ivory, gold, silver, bronze, glass, porcelain, onyx, among others, stand out. The beauty of the chess game, that is, of the pieces, was important for the players of this game, especially when they were from the monarchy or the nobility.
The father of modern chess is considered English Howard Staunton,
since this man in the nineteenth century, designed the model of pieces and the current rules with which chess is played. Chess consists of a 64-square checkered board, with two groups of figures. 16 figures are distributed for each player which are white or black.
The pieces that make up the game are 1 king, 1 queen or queen, 2 bishops, 2 knights. 2 rooks and 8 pawns. These pieces are usually plastic or wood today. This board game is purely rational or has nothing to do with chance. It is interesting to know that in chess you can win, lose or draw or draw when you cannot define a winner. The first international chess tournament was played in London in 1851 and from that event, the fervor for this board game spread even more.
In the 70s, with the beginning of computing, it was possible to play electronic chess, that is, the player faced the computer in the game. Most Outstanding Chess Players of All Time Bobby Fischer (United States) Anatoly Karpov (Russia) Gari Kasparov (Russia) Adolf Anderssen (Germany) Boris Spassky (USSR) Alexander Alekhine (France) Max Euwe (Netherlands)
There are specific schools to learn chess or common educational institutions that offer chess classes to their students. Nowadays, anyone in any part of the world can play chess as it is very cheap and easy to access this strategy game. Chess is great fun for both children, adults, and the elderly.
But this discipline also helps improve intellectual development and mental concentration.
Therefore, it is highly recommended for children and adolescents especially to play chess on a regular basis to improve their performance and intellectual performance. In addition, skills such as tactics, strategy, and logic are developed when playing chess. Today millions of people play amateur chess, others professionally, and also online or on the computer.
Chess when playing professionally is considered a sport or sport. Today there are national, regional, and international tournaments around the world where thousands of people participate seeking to show how much they know about chess.
There are chess Olympiads where individual games are played but each player is part of a group and the better the players do, the better the team’s performance. In professional chess, they are used stricter rules regarding the time they have the players make their moves. This aspect among amateur players is not usually so strict but they are more relaxed. The game of chess is so interesting that there can be games that last 2 minutes and others that last for months depending on the abilities of the players.
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