History of Chess: From Chaturanga to AI

Introduction: Sixty-Four Squares, A Thousand Stories

I have sat in rooms where the only sound was the twitch of a mechanical flag and the barely audible exhale of a grandmaster calculating another galaxy. I’ve stood before the Lewis Chessmen and felt that particular hush museums keep for objects that remember us more than we remember them. I’ve watched an engine line erase a century of trusted knowledge in minutes. The history of chess is not a straight road; it is a braided river, running through empires, religions, salons, laboratories, and streaming screens. To understand where this game is going, you first have to know where it has been.

What follows is a comprehensive history of chess—the origin of chess in South Asia, its reshaping in Persia as shatranj, its journey along the Silk Road, its medieval and Renaissance transformations, the evolution of chess rules and notation, the rise of organized competition and the world championship, the theories that fought over the center, the Cold War and the great divides, the story of women in chess, the revolution of computer chess from Deep Blue to AlphaZero and Stockfish, and the online and pandemic chess boom that forced the whole world to remember a very old game anew.

Origins: Chaturanga, Shatranj, and the Silk Road

Chaturanga history in South Asia

The origin of chess lies most convincingly in the Indian subcontinent, likely in the northwest during the Gupta era. The game called chaturanga—literally, four divisions of the army—was played on an eight-by-eight grid descended from the ashtapada board. Its pieces matched the battlefield: infantry and cavalry, elephants and chariots, a king and his counselor. It was a military allegory that taught nimble strategy and the art of timing, and it moved along with scholars and traders.

In chaturanga, pieces did not yet move as they do today. The counselor (precursor to the queen) crept a single diagonal. The elephant (ancestor of the bishop) made a curious leap. There was no castling, no en passant, and no double-step for pawns. But the core experience—deploying forces, trading time for space, and funneling initiative into a decisive attack—was already there.

Shatranj history in Sasanian Persia

From India the game crossed into Sasanian Persia and became shatranj. Many of the terms we use come from this period: shah for king, shah mat for “the king is helpless,” which becomes check and checkmate. Shatranj prized maneuver, zugzwang-like squeezes, and the careful engineering of weaknesses. The counselor remained modest. The elephant still hopped. Endings had formal studies and elegant solutions. Composers, theoreticians, and court players codified strategy and crafted problems—mansubat—that would echo into later centuries.

Chess in the Islamic Golden Age

Under Islamic patronage, shatranj thrived. Scholars debated openings and endings, documented famous games, and elevated the game as both mathematics and art. This is where you begin to see chess circulate widely along the Silk Road. From Persia through Central Asia and the Arab West, into the courts of Al‑Andalus and the monasteries and market towns of Europe, the idea of an abstract war played on a bounded field captured imaginations. The portability of a board and pieces, tucked into a pouch on a camel or a pilgrim’s pack, made it a perfect traveler’s companion.

Is chess Indian or Chinese in origin?

The most supported line of descent for the history of chess runs from Indian chaturanga through Persian shatranj into medieval Europe. Chinese xiangqi and Korean janggi are rich, parallel traditions with shared ancestry in ancient board games and battlefield allegory. They evolved differently—river on the board, artillery cannons—but the mainstream answer to who invented chess points to India.

Ancient Chess History Takes Root in Europe

Alfonso X and the Libro de los juegos

Chess entered Europe as a gift that spoke many languages. In Iberia, King Alfonso the Learned commissioned the Libro de los juegos, a lavishly illustrated compendium that includes chess, dice games, and astral themes. Its pages display shatranj positions and variants with brightly robed figures and careful instructions. When you handle a modern facsimile, the inked borders, the posture of the pieces, the quiet confidence of the scribes—they make you feel the living continuity of the game.

Medieval variants: Courier chess and Tamerlane chess

Europe and Central Asia experimented. German lands favored courier chess, with a larger board and an extra long-range piece, the courier, hinting at the hungry diagonals that would soon belong to the bishop. In the Timurid realms, Tamerlane chess sprawled across a wide board, exuberant and esoteric, with camels and other exotic forces. These variants remind us that the evolution of chess was never inevitable; it was a garden of paths, and many were tried.

Religion and chess: bans, blessings, and compromises

Chess’s fate in religious contexts was mixed. Some Islamic jurists objected to gambling and diversion, yet others permitted chess when played seriously and without wagers. Medieval Christian monastic rules sometimes discouraged or banned it for novices, wary of distraction and idleness, while princes and churchmen elsewhere embraced it as moral allegory and mind-training. Over time, chess won defenders who saw it as a tool of reason and a harmless companion.

Artifacts: Lewis Chessmen and medieval imagination

If you have the chance to stand before the Lewis Chessmen, do it. Carved in walrus ivory with downturned eyes, these medieval figures—warders that we now call rooks, kings and queens with their weary gravitas, bishops with croziers—were found in the far North Atlantic. They are among the oldest near-complete medieval chess sets in existence. They exhibit a Europeanization of the pieces that measured the game to local taste: the elephant became a bishop; the chariot became a rook; the counselor slowly transformed into the queen.

Evolution of Chess Rules: From Shatranj to the Modern Game

The queen’s rise to power

Late in the medieval period, on the cusp of the Renaissance, the queen changed. In Iberia and Italy, players began to allow the queen to sprint across ranks and files and diagonals, transforming the tempo of the game. The bishop too gained its modern range. Suddenly, a middlegame could explode. This “mad queen” innovation created what we recognize as modern chess. It made combinations blossom, it invited gambits, and it turned the queen from a modest helper into the most powerful piece on the board. The reasons were cultural and practical: a taste for faster, sharper play; an appetite for spectacle; and perhaps a reflection of powerful queens in European courts.

Double-step pawn and en passant history

To further speed play, pawns were granted the option of an initial double step. But chess is allergic to loopholes that distort intention, so en passant was introduced to neutralize unfair bypasses. If a pawn’s double stride would evade a capture it “deserves,” the capturing pawn may take it as if it had moved one. This careful rule is an ethical signature of chess: speed without cheating the spirit of the fight.

Castling history

Castling is a fusion rule—an elegant solution born of experimentation. Medieval players tested forms of king’s leap and rook movement. Over time, a single two-piece maneuver took shape: the king tucks to safety and the rook leaps into play. The exact rules—side, distance, rights—gradually standardized across Europe. Today, castling is chess’s only two-piece move, carrying centuries of tinkering in its swift symmetry.

Stalemate rule history

Shatranj treated stalemate as a win for the side giving stalemate. In some European regions, it was half a victory or a loss. The modern draw interpretation became widely accepted as chess’s notion of fair balance matured. Stalemate as a draw honors the idea that inability to move is not defeat when the king stands safe. This seemingly small rule has giant consequences in endgame theory.

History of chess notation

Descriptive notation—King’s Knight to Bishop Three—dominated English and Spanish texts for a long time. Continental authors favored algebraic notation early, and global adoption gathered momentum across the twentieth century. Algebraic is compact, language-neutral, and engine-friendly. Today it is the grammar of chess literacy, the default in FIDE documents, and the way annotated games travel.

History of chess clocks

Early tournaments relied on sandglasses and gentlemanly restraint. As competitive stakes rose, mechanical chess clocks appeared and became standard in major events during the late nineteenth century, with a landmark London event often cited as the first wide-scale use. Later, digital clocks enabled increments and delay modes, turning time into a more granular, fairer resource.

A short guide to key rule changes by era

Pieces, Sets, and Symbols

History of chess pieces

The genealogy of the pieces is a small history of translation. The rook descends from the Persian rukh, a chariot or tower. The bishop evolved from the alfil, an elephant—hence the Arabic echo in older texts and the elephant bishop in some cultures. The knight is a horse because on ancient and medieval battlefields cavalry was the decisive shock force, able to leap where infantry could not. Pawns are infantry, the people, and their democracy lies in promotion: reach the far rank and become what you need.

Staunton chess set history

Walk into any serious tournament hall and the pieces will look familiar: stout rooks like crenellated towers, bishops with a deep miter cut, knights carved with careful nostrils and flared manes. This is the Staunton pattern, designed by Nathaniel Cooke, manufactured by Jaques of London, and endorsed by the leading English master whose name the design bears. Its triumph was not just beauty; it was standardization. The world needed a set with clear silhouettes, stable bases, and a size that fit the human eye and hand. It gave arbiters a common language and makers a global blueprint.

Why sixty-four squares?

The eight-by-eight board likely descends from ashtapada, a pre-chess grid used for race games in India. Eight is a comfortable power of two, a symmetry that balances complexity and human comprehensibility. Sixty-four squares are enough to allow rich patterns, long maneuvers, and airy diagonals without turning calculation into pure memory. It is a tightrope length that invites creativity.

Medieval to Renaissance Europe: Openings, Literature, and Style

Lucena, Ruy López, and opening theory’s first steps

Luis Ramírez de Lucena’s book at the end of the fifteenth century is one of the earliest printed chess manuals. It captured openings and endings that still whisper in classrooms—most famously, the Lucena position in rook endgames, where a bridge of checks escorts a king home. Shortly after, Ruy López de Segura contributed a seminal work and lent his name to the Ruy López opening, a king’s pawn structure that invites quiet pressure on the center and the c-pawn hook. These early texts are more than museum pieces; they capture living heuristics—develop quickly, fight for the center, don’t waste time—that still coach nervous hands at club night.

Romantic chess: gambits and glory

The Romantic era of chess celebrated attack. Games flashed with sacrifices on f‑seven and h‑seven, with naïve kings stepping into open files. The famous Immortal Game, Anderssen’s glittering cascade of unguarded gifts, is still recited at cafes. Romantic chess is a spirit that never died; even in the engine age, a daring knight jump with a rook sacrifice blazes the room alive. But as defensive technique matured and positional ideas gained rigor, the center would no longer be conquered solely by the last bravest move.

La Bourdonnais vs McDonnell and the birth of public match culture

The epic sequence between La Bourdonnais and McDonnell in the early nineteenth century turned matches into public theater. Newspapers printed moves. Cafe society debated pawn structure like politics. You can still sense the shift reading those scores: chess moving from parlor to profession, from salon to stage.

The Birth of Organized Competition and the World Championship

London’s great tournament and a new ambition

The first truly international chess tournament, in London, gave the game a new axis. Carefully arranged pairings. Timed play. A winner’s aura. Anderssen emerged as a hero, and for the first time generations could imagine a lineage. It seeded the idea that a world champion should be recognized, challenged, dethroned. That ambition would grow into a tradition.

Steinitz: the father of modern chess

Wilhelm Steinitz took the Romantic torch and banked it into embers, then built a furnace. He preached that attack must be justified by the position; that advantages are accumulative; that weaknesses, pawn structure, and king safety decide when tactics should be unleashed. Many call him the father of modern chess. He also held the first widely recognized world title match, setting the template for champions as both scientists and showmen.

Capablanca, Alekhine, Lasker, and the maturing title

Emanuel Lasker’s philosophical resilience, Capablanca’s endgame purity, Alekhine’s hurricane of calculation—each of these champions moved the evolution of chess forward. They refined match formats, popularized openings, and deepened professional respect. The world championship became a crown that demanded not just brilliance, but preparation, stamina, and the ability to change skin.

FIDE history: governance, titles, and a world system

A federation was formed in Paris that would become the game’s governing body. FIDE knit together national federations under the motto “We are one family.” It standardized rules, introduced international titles, and established a formal cycle—Interzonals, Candidates, and a title match. Women’s titles and championship cycles were added, scholastic programs widened, and arbiters gained common guidance. In the late twentieth century, an organizational split cracked the title into rival lineages; later, reunification restored a single championship. The story of FIDE is a story of legitimacy hard-won and often challenged.

Schools of Thought: From Classical to Hypermodern

Classical school

The classical school—codified by Steinitz and evangelized by Tarrasch—believed in occupying the center with pawns, anchoring pieces behind that spearhead, and demonstrating the logic of small advantages. Tarrasch’s aphorisms may sound rigid, but they made a generation of players fluent in development, open files, and the language of structure.

Hypermodern chess history

Then came the hypermodern revolt. Aron Nimzowitsch and Richard Réti argued you do not have to occupy the center to control it. You can invite pawns forward and then attack them. Fianchettoed bishops could rake the board from the flanks. Nimzowitsch’s My System introduced prophylaxis and overprotection, concepts that still guide elite practice. Out of this came the family of Indian Defenses and a flexible skepticism toward dogma. Hypermodern thought was not a rejection but an expansion; it kept the center as a prize and multiplied the ways to claim it.

Soviet chess history: systems, schools, and supremacy

In the Soviet era, chess became a national project. Schools were founded, trainers studied children like scientists study fields, and a culture of analysis and collective preparation bloomed. Botvinnik’s rational method stressed opening planning, middlegame structures, and endgame technique. Tal’s whirlwind tactics, Petrosian’s prophylactic cocoon, Spassky’s universal style—these were not just individuals but archetypes that inspired millions. Soviet journals published high-quality analysis; opening theory expanded; team events like Olympiads and the Candidates tournament drew political and cultural weight. The chessboard became a quiet arena of statecraft.

Cold War chess and the Fischer‑Spassky saga

Fischer’s march to a title match against Spassky was a solitary crusade that captured global attention. Never has a single player so altered the mass perception of chess. The venue became a stage for geopolitics. Cameras and chairs became controversies. In the end, Fischer’s preparation and ferocity redefined professional standards: relentless opening preparation, deep endgame knowledge, and a refusal to accept inferior positions. The match gave chess an enduring mythos.

Karpov vs Kasparov history: rivalry and revolution

The Karpov–Kasparov rivalry reshaped the sport. Karpov’s smooth constriction against Kasparov’s dynamic counterpunch created a dialectic that amplified the whole field. Their matches sparked opening arms races: the Queen’s Gambit Declined, the King’s Indian, the Najdorf, and eventually the evergreen Berlin Defense against the Ruy López. Adjournments made preparation overnight a dark art. Computers began to creep into workrooms. The professional chess lifestyle came into focus: seconds, camps, databases, spy games with novelties buried in innocuous lines.

Kramnik, Anand, Carlsen: consolidation and innovation

Vladimir Kramnik dethroned Kasparov with a seemingly simple truth: a stable structure and deep home preparation can defang even the greatest attacker. Viswanathan Anand modernized with speed and universality; his rapid instincts carried into classical success. Magnus Carlsen’s approach felt both old and new: start from equal positions, grind microscopic advantages, and use endgame mastery and stamina to squeeze water from stone. The title matured through them, and the ecosystem matured around them: a full calendar, global sponsorship, and constant media attention.

Women in Chess History

Vera Menchik history

Vera Menchik, the first women’s world champion, often played in top men’s events and beat many elite contemporaries who joked at their peril. A tongue‑in‑cheek “Menchik Club” was invented for those she defeated; membership grew steadily. She pioneered a path for women in chess not merely by holding a separate crown, but by proving she could fight the strongest on equal terms.

Judit Polgár history

Judit Polgár did not walk through a door; she kicked it wide open and left it like that. Trained in a family experiment that imagined genius as crafted rather than gifted, she reached the absolute top ten, defeated world champions across generations, and played a brand of attacking, concrete chess that thrilled and intimidated. With her, the debate stopped being “if” and turned into “how soon.” Today, inspired by Menchik and Polgár, women’s chess grows in breadth and depth, with rising stars crossing thresholds earlier and with more support than ever.

Beyond titles: the fabric of inclusion

Women arbiters lead top events, more federations support girls’ programs, and mixed elite events bring wider representation. Work remains. Institutional investment, mentorship, and safe, inclusive environments translate potential into podiums. But the direction is clear and overdue: capability never asked permission.

Computer Chess History: From Databases to AlphaZero

Early engines, tablebases, and the end of adjournments

Databases changed everything quietly. A move no longer disappeared into a newspaper archive; it became queryable truth. Tablebases solved endgames to perfect play. Adjournments—once a chance to prepare overnight with a small team—became untenable in the face of machines that could extract the absolute best defense. Time controls adjusted. The hum of a fan replaced the crackle of a coffee pot in midnight analysis.

Deep Blue vs Kasparov

The match between Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov marked a cultural pivot. A specialized, massively parallel machine, armed with evaluation tuned by grandmaster insight, defeated the world’s most dominant player. Debate erupted over psychology, transparency, and what it means to “understand” chess. For professionals, the practical takeaway was stark: the computer is not just a sparring partner; it is a coach with a larger memory and faster hands.

Stockfish history and the open‑source era

Stockfish, an open‑source engine, made top‑tier analysis accessible to anyone with a laptop. It pushed the frontier with relentless pruning, evaluation refinements, and then NNUE—an efficient neural network approach folded into classical search. Opening theory was remapped. Lines once “dead equal” were reevaluated; structures once avoided became laboratories. The crowd could now study at the level of a national team.

AlphaZero chess history and learning from self-play

AlphaZero stunned the community by teaching itself chess via reinforcement learning and self‑play, discovering principles without human books. It played moves that felt romantic yet airtight, sacrifices that were not speculative but deeply justified, and pawn storms that seemed to arrive from another century. For human players, AlphaZero’s lesson was not to mimic moves, but to reconsider assumptions. Understanding could be both deep and dynamic, not constrained by rote principles.

Online Chess History and the Pandemic Boom

From telnet to billion‑click platforms

Before slick interfaces, there was a text‑only world of online chess servers where you typed moves and squinted at ASCII boards. Then graphical clients, rating pools, and communities grew. The modern platforms—lichess with its open ethos and chess.com with its enormous reach—built features at pace: puzzle rushes, video lessons, variants, fair‑play detection, and arenas where the world can watch Magnus play bullet in real time.

The pandemic chess boom

During the global pandemic, chess filled a human need: structure, community, purpose. Board sales soared. Online accounts surged. Families learned together. Streamers turned the game into a variety show with heart. The Queen’s Gambit, a series that centered the interior life of a fictional prodigy, landed in the right moment; searches for the opening spiked, and the narrative of a woman genius in a male-dominated sphere energized a broader audience. Schools built clubs over video. Grandmasters became broadcasters. The chessboard was suddenly a living room table in every time zone.

Modern Chess History: Formats, Time Controls, and Globalization

Classical, rapid, blitz, bullet

Classical chess remains the crown, but rapid and blitz have stepped forward as legitimate showcases. Increments and delay modes preserve endgame quality and reduce flag‑fall farce. Bullet, once dismissed, has become its own performance art, with pre‑move rhythm and mouse dexterity melding with true tactical skill. Each format attracts its own champions and personas.

Candidates Tournament and the world championship cycle

The Candidates Tournament, sometimes a knockout, sometimes a double round‑robin, has settled into a rhythm that balances drama with fairness. The champ’s opponent emerges from a gauntlet of elite events: Grand Prix, World Cup, rating lists. Tie‑breaks may include rapid and blitz, even Armageddon. The world championship match has shortened and lengthened over eras, but the idea holds: two players, a title, and a pressure that tests not just moves but whole identities.

Anti‑cheating, fair play, and trust

Engines necessitated clear fair‑play protocols. Online, statistical detection and behavior analysis work behind the scenes; on site, metal detectors, delays, and supervised rest areas have become normal. It is a delicate balance: protecting integrity without eroding the warmth of the chess community. The majority of games, and players, are honest. Systems are designed for the exceptions.

History of Chess Openings: An Evolving Atlas

Romantic to classical to hypermodern

Watch openings evolve and you’ll see fashion and truth dancing. The King’s Gambit was once the soul of courage; later, it retreated to exhibition boards. The Ruy López absorbed so much theory that even its sidelines are cities. The Sicilian Defense blossomed into a forest of ecosystems—Najdorf, Dragon, Scheveningen—each with its own climate. The hypermodern switch invited the Grünfeld and King’s Indian to challenge occupying the center. Later, Berlin walls and Petrov bunkers reminded everyone that defense is an art too.

Engines and the modern repertoire

Today, strong players live in a tension. On one hand, engines have flattened many positions into draws with best play. On the other, engines have uncovered resources that make long‑held “equals” wildly dynamic. Modern repertoire work is not memorization alone; it’s about steering into structures you understand better than your opponent, and preparing move‑order traps that bloom five moves later. The evolution of openings is continuous; our tools changed, not the need to ask the board hard questions.

A Timeline of Chess: From Chaturanga to AI

• Gupta‑era India: Chaturanga takes shape on the ashtapada board.
• Sasanian Persia: Shatranj develops; terminology and strategy codified.
• Islamic Golden Age: Chess literature flourishes; problems and theory spread along the Silk Road into Al‑Andalus and Europe.
• High Middle Ages: Chess becomes a European pastime; Lewis Chessmen carved and cherished.
• Late medieval to Renaissance: Queen and bishop gain modern power; modern chess is born.
• Early modern era: Lucena and Ruy López publish; castling and en passant standardize; the spirit of Romantic attack emerges.
• Nineteenth‑century Europe: London’s international tournament; mechanical clocks spread; La Bourdonnais vs McDonnell captivates; Anderssen’s brilliancies.
• Steinitz to Lasker: World championship formalizes; positional doctrine anchors.
• Capablanca and Alekhine: Technique, calculation, and opening theory mature.
• Soviet ascendance: Botvinnik’s school; Tal, Petrosian, and Spassky; state‑backed excellence.
• Fischer era: Global spotlight; professional standards leap.
• Karpov vs Kasparov: Rivalry, preparation, opening arms races; beginnings of engine influence.
• Kramnik and Anand: Modern universal chess; Berlin Defense renaissance; rapid tiebreaks.
• Carlsen generation: Grind and precision; data‑driven training.
• Computer revolution: Databases, tablebases; Deep Blue’s landmark; Stockfish dominance; AlphaZero’s self‑learning revelations.
• Online era: Platforms scale globally; streaming culture; fair‑play tech.
• Pandemic boom: New audiences, renewed love; Queen’s Gambit effect.
• Today: A hybrid world of classical prestige and digital theater, guided by engines and human creativity.

FAQ: Concise, Evidence‑Based Answers

Culture, Museums, and Primary Sources

A complete history of chess lives in museums, manuscripts, and letters as much as in databases.

• Libro de los juegos (King Alfonso’s Book of Games) presents shatranj and variants with detailed illustrations—viewable today through national library portals and facsimiles.
• Lewis Chessmen (British Museum and National Museums Scotland) provide tangible evidence of medieval European chess culture and iconography.
• Early printed works like Lucena’s treatise and Ruy López’s book show the first steps toward systematic opening and ending analysis.
• Islamic Golden Age manuscripts in museum collections preserve shatranj problems and theory by scholars such as al‑Adli and as‑Suli.
• FIDE archives trace governance, title norms, and the world championship’s evolution, including the split in the nineties and later reunification.

Behind the Moves: Why Chess Endures

I’ve watched a child learn en passant and feel the exhilarating shiver that rules can be both strict and surprisingly generous. I’ve listened to a world champion describe how a small, anonymous novelty in a side line ruined a month of preparation. I’ve seen the way a tournament hall becomes a temporary city, with its own laws and legends, where people who share no common language share a board and walk away friends.

The endurance of chess rests on a few things. Simplicity of rules married to depth of consequences. A portable theater for drama and calm. A fair battlefield that ages with you. The history of chess reads like an atlas of human thought: ambition and caution, creativity and discipline, tradition and revision. It changes with each era but always returns as itself.

Key Takeaways

• Origin of chess: likely India, evolving to shatranj in Persia and then to modern chess in Europe.
• Evolution of chess rules: queen and bishop empowerment, pawn double step with en passant, castling, and stalemate as a draw created the modern game.
• History of chess pieces: rich etymologies and cultural translations; Staunton set standardized modern play.
• Medieval to Renaissance: Libro de los juegos, Lucena, and Ruy López laid foundations for openings and endgames.
• History of chess world championship: Steinitz established the modern lineage; later eras were shaped by Soviet dominance, Fischer’s breakthrough, Karpov‑Kasparov rivalry, and the modern titans.
• Hypermodern chess history: Nimzowitsch and Réti expanded central theory with control rather than occupation.
• Women in chess history: Vera Menchik and Judit Polgár broke barriers; contemporary growth continues.
• Computer chess history: from Deep Blue to Stockfish and AlphaZero, engines transformed analysis and preparation.
• Online chess history and the pandemic chess boom: platforms, streaming, and a global audience re‑energized the game.

Glossary of Historical Terms

• Chaturanga: Early Indian ancestor of chess with military‑theme pieces.
• Shatranj: Persian form of chess with different piece powers and outcomes.
• Mansuba: A composed shatranj problem or study.
• En passant: Special pawn capture rule after an opponent’s double step.
• Castling: A combined king and rook move for safety and development.
• Staunton pattern: The standard design for tournament chess sets.
• Hypermodern: School of thought advocating central control without occupation.
• Tablebases: Databases that solve endgames perfectly.
• Candidates Tournament: Event that determines the world championship challenger.

Conclusion: The Game That Remembers

From the quiet boards of Gupta‑era courtyards to the roar of a modern arena where fans spam emojis for a tactic no one saw, the history of chess is a continuous conversation. It is the same sixty‑four squares and it is never the same. A child in Lagos learns the Ruy López while a retiree in Kraków plays bullet on a phone; a researcher in Tokyo tests a new evaluation heuristic; a coach in São Paulo teaches stalemate’s trickery; a curator in London adjusts a light over walrus ivory kings who stare at forever.

The point of a history of chess is not to pin down a fossil. It is to understand a living thing, how it breathes in different climates, how it survives fashions and revolutions, how it somehow remains the fairest argument two minds can have without saying a word. If you’ve read this far, you know what every good player knows at move one: it’s your turn.