The epic story of chess

Chess is one of the world’s oldest games of war: a battlefield upon which armies fight without bloodshed, and where the victory belongs not to the strongest arm but to the most disciplined mind. It shares an antiquity with the Chinese encirclement game of Go, Chinese chess (Xiangqi), and the Japanese game of Shogi. Yet chess is generally said to have developed not in China or Japan, but in northern India at some period before 500 AD. Some experts, however, place its origins much further back, in Mohenjo-Daro of the Harappan civilisation, in what is now Pakistan, thousands of years BCE.

Archaeological discoveries at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa include gaming pieces and terracotta or brick grids believed to have served as early game boards. These finds suggest the existence of ancient strategy games widely regarded as forerunners of Chaturanga, the Indian game from which modern chess ultimately developed.

Mohenjo-Daro, one of the principal cities of the Indus Valley Civilization between about 2600 and 2000 BCE, has produced distinctive gaming pieces and marked bricks. Among the discoveries is a grid of squares incised on a fired brick in the site’s DK area. Archaeologists believe that it may have been used as a model for an early game board, perhaps for a race game or a primitive form of chess.

Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa and other Indus Valley settlements have also uncovered terracotta and ivory pieces in conical, rounded and animal-shaped forms. These objects are thought to represent some of the earliest gaming counters yet found.

Many scholars regard these artefacts as distant predecessors of Chaturanga, the ancient Indian game of military strategy. The name means “four divisions” of the army—infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots—which later came to be represented in chess by the pawn, knight, bishop and rook.

The original game boards were probably made of wood or other perishable materials, which explains why so little direct evidence has survived. Most surviving traces consist of clay and brick impressions. Another important discovery was made at Lothal in present-day Gujarat, where a nearly complete chess-like board dating to about 2400 BCE was unearthed, providing further evidence of the long history of board games in the Indus Valley Civilization.

Some cultures have proved especially prolific in producing great exponents of chess, notably Jewish culture, Russia and now Pakistan’s neighbour India, perhaps harking back to the subcontinent’s presumed foundation of the game. Among Jewish great masters one might single out Wilhelm Steinitz, Johannes Zukertort, Siegbert Tarrasch, Emanuel Lasker, Akiba Rubinstein, Aron Nimzowitsch, Rudolf Spielmann, Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, Bobby Fischer, Viktor Korchnoi and Garry Kasparov.

Among Russians one could cite Mikhail Tchigorin, Alexander Alekhine, Anatoly Karpov and Vladimir Kramnik. From the subcontinent we have Sultan Khan, Vishwanathan Anand and an extraordinary crop of young players including Arjun Erigaisi, Dommaraju Gukesh, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin, Raunak Sadhwani, Ashwath Kaushik, Shreyas Royal and, last but very definitely not least, the eleven-year-young girl Bodhana Sivanandan—the latter two both, of course, British players of Indian/Pakistan heritage.

I insist on the use of culture, and not race, since I doubt that race actually exists as a meaningful classification. Human beings share over 90% of our DNA with chimpanzees and, it has been claimed, around 60% with the humble banana, not to mention an equal fifty percent share with the even more lowly pea. It is my firm belief that seeming racial differences can be explained by the varying responses of the human organism to climate, weather and particular topographical locations—for example, fair skin tones being less resistant to strong sunlight.

At any rate, while the board and pieces are of course black and white, the game of chess is colour blind.

In fact, the human “race”—for there is only one—positively thrives and burgeons on exogamy. Intermarriage strengthens rather than weakens, while the much-vaunted racial purity of the Nazis and their ilk leads instead to genetic narrowing and inevitable deterioration. The famous inbreeding of the Habsburgs, and the dysfunctional Habsburg jaw, is a case in point.

Apart from chess, the subcontinental culture was also notably adept in the early development of mathematics. This is perhaps no coincidence, since both chess and mathematics arise from the same human appetite: the desire to discover order hidden beneath complexity.

There are many examples. Aryabhatta, from the golden 5th century, numbered the days in a year and, more significantly, developed trigonometry for spherical geometry. Bhaskara, the 7th century originator of the Hindu decimal system, and Brahmagupta, who developed the usage of zero and introduced negative numbers into calculative arithmetic, greatly advanced mathematical thought. The 9th century Mahavira differentiated between mathematics and astrology, refining geometric calculations including the proof that there are no square roots of negative numbers.

The original chess pieces, less mobile than their modern counterparts, represented units of the ancient Indian army: foot-soldiers, cavalry, armed chariots and, of course, elephants. The fighting forces were led on the chessboard, as in real life, by the King and his senior minister, the vizier, who later became the queen in the modern game.

From India, chess spread through central Asia, China, Persia and Europe. Like all great ideas, it travelled by adapting itself to new environments. The game was popular in Constantinople in the 11th century AD and was recorded as a favourite pastime of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus.

Once chess reached the West, both the identity and design of the individual pieces were gradually modified to reflect the social world of feudal Europe. The King remained unchanged, naturally enough, while pawns continued to represent infantry. The elephant, the heavy cavalry of Indian arms, was replaced by the bishop, representing the power of the Church in the medieval environment. The elephant was, in any case, virtually unknown as an engine of war in the West, with the notable exception perhaps of Livy’s mention of Hannibal’s use of the beasts against Rome during the Second Punic War on the Italian mainland.

The horse of the Indian game became the knight, the universally recognised symbol of feudal chivalry. The outdated chariot became the castle—“Turm” in German, “torre” in Spanish, “tour” in French, naturally signifying tower. In English, however, the accepted term is “rook”. This word reaches back either to the ancient Persian word “rukh” for war chariot or perhaps to “rocco”, an Italian alternative for “tower”.

Finally, the vizier was transformed into the queen, a vital component of the medieval court and a piece about to become even more powerful during the Renaissance, with dominant figures on the political stage such as Queen Isabella of Castile, Margaret of Parma, Vicereine of the Spanish Netherlands, Catherine de Medici and, of course, Queen Elizabeth I.

Towards the close of the 15th century, a sweeping change in the rules of chess occurred in Europe. The most important alteration was the emergence of the chess queen. From being the almost helpless companion of the old King, the piece was transformed in Phoenix-like resurrection into the most powerful piece on the chessboard.

Add to this the double move available to pawns on their first turn, the ability of the new bishop to sweep along entire diagonals, and the right to castle the King into safety, and one virtually has the modern version of chess played throughout the world today in 130 countries.

This is the version officially recognised by the international ruling body of chess, the World Chess Federation, FIDÉ (Fédération Internationale des Échecs), which embraces over five million individual members.

Until the 20th century chess was often regarded as a game for the aristocratic, wealthy or leisured classes. But chess, like many great human achievements, escaped the boundaries imposed upon it. Today it belongs not merely to courts and clubs but to millions of ordinary enthusiasts.

Partly this wider appeal came from the impetus given to chess in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution of 1917. There chess became a national institution, more popular than football. As a result of massive state encouragement, Soviet grandmasters more or less dominated world chess from the 1940s until the Soviet megalith itself suddenly expired.

Even more impressive is the figure of over a hundred million chess lovers who have taken to playing online as a result of the Covid pandemic. The ancient game, which began on physical boards of wood and perhaps clay, has found a new home in the invisible world of the internet.

Among all board games, chess appears to possess the ideal blend of strategy, tactics and pure skill. Compare it, for example, with backgammon, where the outcome is unduly influenced by the fortunate throw of the dice, or with draughts, where the uniformity of the pieces tends to engineer a predominance of tactical solutions. The only games that compare in subtlety, science and depth with chess are Xiangqi, Shogi and Go.

Chess is an almost perfect combination of art, investigative calculation, knowledge and inspiration. Analysing a game is primarily an exercise in logic, yet executing a brilliant mating attack or solving a profound strategic question can also bring a genuine feeling of creative achievement.

But chess is far from a solitary intellectual undertaking, like the solving of a crossword puzzle. The competitive aspect makes it a battle between two individuals—a battle without bloodshed, but still a fierce struggle of mind, willpower and, at the highest levels, physical endurance.

More than anything else, however, chess has an ancient and distinguished history. The game provides a deep sense of continuity with the intellectual community of past ages, extending through many hundreds of years and embracing all nations and cultures with some astonishing connections.

Thus, surprisingly, in real life the Aladdin of the pantomime fairy tale was a noted chess player: a lawyer from Samarkand in the court of Tamburlaine, the 14th-century conqueror of much of Asia. History occasionally performs its own little tricks of irony, and here it has given us a figure who belongs simultaneously to the world of enchantment and to the stern intellectual discipline of chess.

Tamburlaine himself loved to play chess. He named his son Shah Rukh because he was moving a rook on the megalomaniac giant chessboard he preferred—a 112-square board, with extra pieces such as the gryphon, giraffe and cannon—when the birth was announced.

Goethe was an avid chess player and believed, with Leibniz, that the game was essential to the cultivation of the intellect. Benjamin Franklin, another genius, was also an enthusiast; his Morals of Chess, published in 1786, was the first chess publication in America. Shakespeare and Einstein both played chess. Ivan the Terrible, Queen Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great and Napoleon were all chess enthusiasts, while Lenin described chess as “the gymnasium of the mind”.

Among English monarchs, King Henry VIII possessed a chessboard together with pieces. It can doubtless be assumed that Henry regarded chess as a natural accomplishment of a Renaissance prince, along with writing poetry and jousting. The same age that admired the knight on horseback admired the knight upon the chessboard; both required imagination, calculation and the ability to anticipate the movement of an opponent.

Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII brings to a close the mighty history cycle commencing with Edward III, now generally regarded as, at least partly, a Shakespeare original, and one of the very few plays of the period which specifically mentions chess:
“And bid the lords hold on their play at chess, For we will walk and meditate alone.”
(Scene 3 in the Royal Shakespeare Company edition.)

The cycle continues with Richard II, Henry IV Parts One and Two, Henry V, Henry VI Parts One, Two and Three, and Richard III. It is my opinion that this huge dramatic cycle, essentially one long play, represents the true English national epic, in a way that Beowulf (too early in our national lifeline) and Paradise Lost (too Latinate for most readers, though a treat for those who like their English poetry in a Latin word order) do not.

If I am correct, then the Shakespeare histories together create our epic poem of national identity, on a par with Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Divine Comedy, the Welsh Mabinogion, Finland’s Kalevala, Portugal’s Lusiads and, for the Jewish people, the epic story of the Hebrew Bible.

If one is looking for kings, queens, castles, knights and bishops in abundance, then Shakespeare’s histories are the place to go. They contain the very vocabulary of chess transformed into human drama: rulers who move across the board of history, nobles who serve as pieces in a greater contest, sacrifices made for position and victory, and battles where the ultimate struggle is not merely for territory but for meaning.

If one is looking for the origins of chess, and perhaps an explanation of why and which young players are taking the world by storm, then the culture of the Indian/Pakistani subcontinent is the answer. From that ancient civilisation came a game that travelled across continents, changing its appearance while preserving its essential spirit.

Chess is therefore one of humanity’s great shared inheritances. It belongs neither to one nation nor to one age. It has passed through India, Persia, Europe and the modern world; it has been played by emperors and revolutionaries, poets and scientists, monarchs and ordinary enthusiasts. The pieces may be limited in number, the board may contain only sixty-four squares, but the possibilities within those squares seem almost without limit.
The wonder of chess lies precisely in this contrast. The materials are simple, yet the ideas are profound. A small wooden figure may represent a soldier, a horseman, a bishop, a monarch or a queen; a single move may change the fate of an entire battle; and a quiet position may conceal the beginning of a revolution.

The board itself is black and white, but the civilisation that created and developed the game is not. Chess has travelled because humanity travels; it has flourished because cultures meet; and it has endured because the human mind continues to delight in challenge, imagination and discovery.

The game of chess is, finally and to reiterate, colour blind. It does not ask the player’s origin, ancestry or appearance. It asks only for thought, patience and understanding. In that sense, perhaps the ancient battlefield of sixty-four squares reveals something larger than strategy: it reveals the shared inheritance of humankind itself.

Anish Giri vs. Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa

Super Rapid Croatia (rapid), Zagreb, 2026, round 9

1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. g3 Be7 5. Bg2 O-O 6. O-O c6 7. Qc2 b6 8. Rd1 Nbd7 9. Bf4 Nh5 10. Bc1 Nhf6 11. b3 Bb7 12. Nc3 Ba6 13. Bb2 dxc4 14. bxc4 Bxc4 15. Nd2 Ba6 16. Bxc6 Rc8 17. Bf3!? TN

Improving on the losing continuation 17. Qa5 [Yevseev-Lysyj, St.Petersburg Rapid, 2017].

17… b5 18. a3 Qb6 19. Qb3 Rb8 20. Nde4 Nxe4 21. Bxe4 Bb7 22. Bxb7 Qxb7 23. d5 Nc5 24. Qa2 a5 25. dxe6

A weaker continuation than either 25. Rab1 or 25. d6.

25… fxe6 26. Rac1?

The text is a significant error. White could hold on with 26. Nb1 Qe4 27. Bd4 when after 27… a4 or …Rfd8 he is only slightly worse.

26… b4 27. axb4 axb4 28. Nb1 b3 29. Qa5 Rf5 30. Qe1 Ne4 31. Bd4??

After this blunder, white is losing, although after the essential 31. f3 Bb4 32. Qf1 Bc5+ 33. Kg2 Nf2 34. Re1, he is most likely lost, in any case.

31… e5 32. Be3 Bg5 33. Qa5 Nxf2 34. Bxf2 Rxf2 White resigns 0-1

After 35. Qd5+ (but not 35. Kxf2?? Rf8+ 36. Kg1 (36. Ke1 Qh1#) 36… Be3#) 35… Qxd5 36. Rxd5 Rxe2, white is facing an inevitable extermination.

Ray’s 206th book, “ Chess in the Year of the King ”, written in collaboration with Adam Black, and his 207th, “ Napoleon and Goethe: The Touchstone of Genius ” (which discusses their relationship with chess) can be ordered from both Amazon and Blackwell’s. His 208th, the world record for chess books, written jointly with the late chess playing artist, Barry Martin,  Chess through the Looking Glass ,  is now also available from Amazon. 

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