Origins King
Khosrow I sits on his throne before the chessboard, while his vizir and the Indian envoy Deva Sharma, probably sent by the
Maukhari King
Śarvavarman of
Kannauj, are playing chess.
Shahnama, 10th century AD. Texts referring to the origins of chess date from the beginning of the seventh century. Three are written in
Pahlavi (
Middle Persian) and one, the
Harshacharita, is in
Sanskrit. One of these texts, the
Chatrang-namak, represents one of the earliest written accounts of chess. The narrator
Bozorgmehr explains that
Chatrang, "Chess" in Pahlavi, was introduced to Persia by '
Dewasarm, a great ruler of India' during the reign of
Khosrow I: The oldest known chess manual was in Arabic and dates to about 840, written by
al-Adli ar-Rumi (800–870), a renowned Arab chess player, titled
Kitab ash-shatranj (The Book of Chess). This is a lost manuscript, but is referenced in later works. Here also, al-Adli attributes the origins of Persian chess to India, along with the eighth-century collection of fables
Kalīla wa-Dimna. By the 20th century, a substantial consensus developed regarding chess's origins in northwest
India in the early seventh century. More recently, this consensus has been the subject of further scrutiny. 's
Book of chess, dice and boards The early forms of chess in India were known as
chaturaṅga (), literally "four divisions" [of the military]
infantry,
cavalry,
elephants, and
chariotryrepresented by pieces that would later evolve into the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook, respectively. Chaturanga was played on an 8×8 uncheckered board, called
ashtāpada. Thence it spread eastward and westward along the
Silk Road. The earliest evidence of chess is found in nearby
Sasanian Persia around 600 A.D., where the game came to be known by the name
chatrang (). Chatrang was taken up by the
Muslim world after the
Islamic conquest of Persia (633–51), where it was then named
shatranj (; ), with the pieces largely retaining their Persian names. In Spanish, "shatranj" was rendered as
ajedrez ("al-shatranj"), in
Portuguese as
xadrez, and in
Greek as ζατρίκιον (
zatrikion, which comes directly from the Persian
chatrang), but in the rest of Europe it was replaced by versions of the Persian
shāh ("king"), from which the English words "check" and "chess" descend. The word "
checkmate" is derived from the Persian
shāh māt ("the king is dead"). playing chess, , 1283
Xiangqi is the form of chess best known in China. The eastern migration of chess, into China and Southeast Asia, has even less documentation than its migration west, making it largely conjectured. The word
xiàngqí () was used in China to refer to a game from 569 A.D. at the latest, but it has not been proven that this game was directly related to chess. The first reference to Chinese chess appears in a book entitled
Xuánguaì Lù (; "Record of the Mysterious and Strange"), dating to about 800. A minority view holds that Western chess arose from xiàngqí or one of its predecessors. Chess historians Jean-Louis Cazaux and Rick Knowlton contend that xiangqi's intrinsic characteristics make it easier to construct an evolutionary path from China to India/Persia than the opposite direction. The oldest archaeological chess artifactsivory pieceswere excavated in ancient
Afrasiab, today's
Samarkand, in
Uzbekistan, Central Asia, and date to about 760, with some of them possibly being older. Remarkably, almost all findings of the oldest pieces come from along the Silk Road, from the former regions of the Tarim Basin (today's Xinjiang in China),
Transoxiana,
Sogdiana,
Bactria,
Gandhara, to Iran on one end and to India through
Kashmir on the other. in 1977, dating to the 700s and among the oldest in the world. The ivory came from India. The game reached Western Europe and Russia via at least three routes, the earliest being in the ninth century. By the year 1000, it had spread throughout both the
Muslim Iberia and
Latin Europe. A Latin poem called
Versus de scachis ("Verses on Chess") dated to the late 10th century, has been preserved at
Einsiedeln Abbey in Switzerland.
1200–1700: Origins of the modern game , depicting her sisters
Lucia (),
Minerva (), and
Europa () playing chess. The older woman is their maidservant. The game of chess was then played and known in all European countries. A famous 13th-century Spanish manuscript covering chess,
backgammon, and
dice is known as the , which is the earliest
European treatise on chess as well as being the oldest document on European
tables games. The rules were fundamentally similar to those of the Arabic
shatranj. The differences were mostly in the use of a checkered board instead of a plain monochrome board used by Arabs and the habit of allowing some or all pawns to make an initial double step. In some regions, the queen, which had replaced the
wazir, or the king could also make an initial two-square leap under some conditions. 1497 book Around 1200, the rules of shatranj started to be modified in Europe, culminating, several major changes later, in the emergence of modern chess practically as it is known today. A major change was the modern piece movement rules, which began to appear in intellectual circles in
Valencia, Spain, around 1475, which established the foundations and brought it very close to current chess. These new rules then were quickly adopted in Italy and Southern France before diffusing into the rest of Europe. Pawns gained the ability to advance two squares on their first move, while bishops and queens acquired their modern movement powers. The
queen replaced the earlier
vizier chess piece toward the end of the 10th century and by the 15th century had become the most powerful piece; in light of that, modern chess was often referred to at the time as "Queen's Chess" or "Mad Queen Chess". Castling, derived from the "king's leap", usually in combination with a pawn or rook move to bring the king to safety, was introduced. These new rules quickly spread throughout Western Europe. Writings about
chess theory began to appear in the late 15th century. An
anonymous treatise on chess of 1490 with the first part containing some openings and the second 30 endgames is deposited in the library of the
University of Göttingen. The book
El Libro dels jochs partitis dels schachs en nombre de 100 was written by
Francesc Vicent in
Segorbe in 1495, but no copy of this work has survived. The two most important French masters were
François-André Danican Philidor, a musician by profession, who discovered the importance of pawns for chess strategy, and later
Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais, who won a famous series of matches against Irish master
Alexander McDonnell in 1834. Centers of chess activity in this period were
coffee houses in major European cities like
Café de la Régence in Paris and ''
Simpson's Divan'' in London. At the same time, the
Romantic intellectual movement had had a far-reaching impact on chess, with aesthetics and tactical beauty being held in higher regard than objective soundness and strategic planning. As a result, virtually all games began with the
Open Game, and it was considered unsportsmanlike to decline gambits that invited tactical play such as the
King's Gambit and the
Evans Gambit. This chess philosophy is known as
Romantic chess, and its sharp, tactical style of play was predominant until the late 19th century.
The rules concerning stalemate were finalized in the early 19th century. Also in the 19th century, the convention that White moves first was established (formerly either White or Black could move first). Finally, the rules around castling and en passant captures were standardized—variations in these rules persisted in Italy until the late 19th century. The resulting standard game is sometimes referred to as
Western chess or
international chess, particularly in Asia where other games of the chess family such as
xiangqi are prevalent. Since the 19th century, the only rule changes, such as the establishment of the correct procedure for claiming a draw by repetition, have been technical in nature. and
Pierre Saint-Amant, on 16 December 1843 As the 19th century progressed, chess organization developed quickly. Many
chess clubs, chess books, and chess journals appeared. There were correspondence matches between cities; for example, the London Chess Club played against the
Edinburgh Chess Club in 1824.
Chess problems became a regular part of 19th-century newspapers;
Bernhard Horwitz,
Josef Kling, and
Samuel Loyd composed some of the most influential problems. In 1843,
von der Lasa published his and
Bilguer's Handbuch des Schachspiels (
Handbook of Chess), the first comprehensive manual of chess theory. The first modern chess tournament was organized by
Howard Staunton, a leading English chess player, and was
held in London in 1851. It was won by the German
Adolf Anderssen, who was hailed as the leading chess master. His energetic attacking style was
typical for the time. Sparkling games like Anderssen's
Immortal Game and
Evergreen Game or
Morphy's "
Opera Game" were regarded as the highest possible summit of the art of chess. Deeper insight into the nature of chess came with the American
Paul Morphy, an extraordinary
chess prodigy. Morphy won against all important competitors (except Staunton, who refused to play), including Anderssen, during his short chess career between 1857 and 1863.
1873–1945: Birth of a sport , the first official
World Chess Champion (1886–1894)
Prague-born
Wilhelm Steinitz laid the foundations for a scientific approach to the game, the art of breaking a position down into components and preparing correct plans. In addition to his theoretical achievements, Steinitz founded an important tradition: his triumph over the leading German master
Johannes Zukertort in 1886 is regarded as the first official
World Chess Championship. This win marked a stylistic transition at the highest levels of chess from an attacking, tactical style predominant in the Romantic era to a more positional, strategic style introduced to the chess world by Steinitz. Steinitz lost his crown in 1894 to a much younger player, the German mathematician
Emanuel Lasker, who maintained this title for 27 years, the longest tenure of any world champion. After the end of the 19th century, the number of master tournaments and matches held annually quickly grew. The first
Olympiad was held in Paris in 1924, and
FIDE was founded initially for the purpose of organizing that event. In 1927, the
Women's World Chess Championship was established; the first to hold the title was Czech-English master
Vera Menchik. A prodigy from Cuba,
José Raúl Capablanca, known for his skill in endgames, won the World Championship from Lasker in 1921. Capablanca was undefeated in tournament play for eight years, from 1916 to 1924. His successor (1927) was the Russian-French
Alexander Alekhine, a strong attacking player who died as the world champion in 1946. Alekhine briefly lost the title to Dutch player
Max Euwe in 1935 and regained it two years later. In the
interwar period, chess was revolutionized by the new theoretical school of so-called
hypermodernists like
Aron Nimzowitsch and
Richard Réti. They advocated controlling the of the board with distant pieces rather than with pawns, thus inviting opponents to occupy the center with pawns, which become objects of attack. Among the innovations popularized by hypermodernists was the
fianchetto: the development of bishops away from, rather than towards, the center, onto the b- and g-files.
1945–1990: Post-World War II era , the first post-war World Champion After the death of Alekhine, a new World Champion was sought. FIDE, which has controlled the title since then, ran a tournament of elite players. The winner of the
1948 tournament was Russian
Mikhail Botvinnik. In 1950, FIDE established a system of titles, conferring the title of
Grandmaster on 27 players. (Some sources state that, in 1914, the title of chess Grandmaster was first formally conferred by Tsar
Nicholas II of Russia to Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine,
Tarrasch, and
Marshall, but this is a disputed claim.) Botvinnik started an era of
Soviet dominance in the chess world, which mainly through the Soviet government's politically inspired efforts to demonstrate intellectual superiority over the West stood almost uninterrupted for more than a half-century. Until the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was only one non-Soviet champion, American
Bobby Fischer (champion 1972–1975). Botvinnik also revolutionized
opening theory. Previously, Black strove for equality, attempting to neutralize White's
first-move advantage. As Black, Botvinnik strove for the initiative from the beginning. In the previous informal system of World Championships, the current champion decided which challenger he would play for the title and the challenger was forced to seek sponsors for the match. FIDE set up a new system of qualifying tournaments and matches. The world's strongest players were seeded into
Interzonal tournaments, where they were joined by players who had qualified from Zonal tournaments (often national or regional championships). The leading finishers in these Interzonals would go through the "
Candidates" stage, which was initially a tournament, and later a series of knockout matches. The winner of the Candidates would then play the reigning champion for the title. A champion defeated in a match had a right to play a rematch a year later. This system operated on a three-year cycle. Botvinnik participated in championship matches over a period of fifteen years. He won the world championship tournament in 1948 and retained the title in tied matches in 1951 and 1954. In 1957, he lost to
Vasily Smyslov, but regained the title in a rematch in 1958. In 1960, he lost the title to the 23-year-old Latvian prodigy
Mikhail Tal, an accomplished
tactician and attacking player who is widely regarded as one of the most creative players ever, hence his nickname "the magician from Riga". Botvinnik again regained the title in a rematch in 1961. , World Champion from 1972 to 1975 Following the 1961 event, FIDE abolished the automatic right of a deposed champion to a rematch, and the next champion, Armenian
Tigran Petrosian, a player renowned for his defensive and positional skills, held the title for two cycles, 1963–1969. His successor,
Boris Spassky from Russia (champion 1969–1972), won games in both positional and sharp tactical style. The next championship, the so-called
Match of the Century, saw the first non-Soviet challenger since World War II, American
Bobby Fischer. Fischer defeated his opponents in the
Candidates matches by unheard-of margins, and convincingly defeated Spassky for the world championship. The match was followed closely by news media of the day, leading to a surge in popularity for chess; it also held significant political importance at the height of the
Cold War, with the match being seen by both sides as a
microcosm of the conflict between East and West. In 1975, however, Fischer refused to defend his title against Soviet
Anatoly Karpov when he was unable to reach agreement on conditions with FIDE, and Karpov obtained the title by default. Fischer modernized many aspects of chess, especially by extensively preparing openings. Karpov defended his title twice against
Viktor Korchnoi and dominated the 1970s and early 1980s with a string of tournament successes. In the
1984 World Chess Championship, Karpov faced his toughest challenge to date, the young
Garry Kasparov from
Baku,
Soviet Azerbaijan. The match was aborted in controversial circumstances after 5 months and 48 games with Karpov leading by 5 wins to 3, but evidently exhausted; many commentators believed Kasparov, who had won the last two games, would have won the match had it continued. Kasparov won the
1985 rematch. Kasparov and Karpov contested three further closely fought matches in 1986, 1987 and 1990, Kasparov winning them all. Kasparov became the dominant figure of world chess from the mid-1980s until his retirement from competition in 2005.
Beginnings of chess technology Chess-playing computer programs (later known as
chess engines) began to appear in the 1960s. In 1970, the first major computer chess tournament, the
North American Computer Chess Championship, was held, followed in 1974 by the first
World Computer Chess Championship. In the late 1970s, dedicated home chess computers such as Fidelity Electronics'
Chess Challenger became commercially available, as well as software to run on home computers. The overall standard of computer chess was low, however, until the 1990s. The first
endgame tablebases, which provided
perfect play for relatively simple endgames such as king and rook versus king and bishop, appeared in the late 1970s. This set a precedent to the complete six- and seven-piece tablebases that became available in the 2000s and 2010s respectively. Some of the earliest
chess databases, which are collections of chess games searchable by move and position, include
Ken Thompson and
Joe Condon's king-queen versus king-rook chess database. They were used for testing early chess engines like
Belle. It won the
ACM North American Computer Chess Championship five times and the 1980
World Computer Chess Championship. The first commercial chess database was introduced by the German company
ChessBase in 1987. Databases containing millions of chess games have since had a profound effect on opening theory and other areas of chess research. Digital
chess clocks were invented in 1973, though they did not become commonplace until the 1990s. Digital clocks allow for time controls involving
increments and delays.
1990–present: Rise of computers and online chess Technology The
Internet enabled
online chess as a new medium of playing, with
chess servers allowing users to play other people from different parts of the world in real time. The first such server, known as
Internet Chess Server (ICS), was developed at the University of Utah in 1992. ICS formed the basis for the first commercial chess server, the
Internet Chess Club, which was launched in 1995, and for other early chess servers such as
Free Internet Chess Server (FICS). Since then, many other platforms have appeared, and online chess began to rival over-the-board chess in popularity. The two most popular platforms today are
chess.com and
Lichess. During the 2020
COVID-19 pandemic, the isolation ensuing from
quarantines imposed in many places around the world, combined with the success of the popular
Netflix show ''
The Queen's Gambit'' and other factors such as the popularity of online tournaments (notably
PogChamps) and chess
Twitch streamers, resulted in a surge of popularity not only for online chess, but for the game of chess in general; this phenomenon has been referred to in the media as the 2020 online chess boom.
Computer chess has also seen major advances. By the 1990s, chess engines could consistently defeat most amateurs, and in 1997
Deep Blue defeated World Champion Garry Kasparov in
a six-game match, starting an era of computer dominance at the highest level of chess. In the 2010s, engines significantly stronger than even the best human players became accessible for free on a number of
PC and
mobile platforms, and free engine analysis became a commonplace feature on internet chess servers. An adverse effect of the easy availability of engine analysis on hand-held devices and personal computers has been the rise of
computer cheating, which has grown to be a major concern in both over-the-board and online chess. In 2017,
AlphaZero—a
neural network also capable of playing
shogi and
Go—was introduced. Since then, many chess engines based on neural network evaluation have been written, the best of which have surpassed the traditional "
brute-force" engines. AlphaZero also introduced many novel ideas and ways of playing the game, which affected the style of play at the top level. As
endgame tablebases developed, they began to provide
perfect play in endgame positions in which the
game-theoretical outcome was previously unknown, such as positions with king, queen and pawn against king and queen. In 1991, Lewis Stiller published a tablebase for select six-piece endgames, and by 2005, following the publication of
Nalimov tablebases, all six-piece endgame positions were solved. In 2012, Lomonosov tablebases were published which solved all seven-piece endgame positions. Use of tablebases enhances the performance of chess engines by providing definitive results in some branches of analysis. Previously, preparation at the professional level required an extensive chess library and several subscriptions to publications such as
Chess Informant to keep up with opening developments and study opponents' games. Today, preparation at the professional level involves the use of databases containing millions of games, and engines to analyze different opening variations and prepare novelties. A number of online learning resources are also available for players of all levels, such as online courses, tactics trainers, and video lessons. Since the late 1990s, it has been possible to follow major international chess events online, the players' moves being relayed in real time. Sensory boards have been developed to enable automatic transmission of moves. Chess players will frequently run engines while watching these games, allowing them to quickly identify mistakes by the players and spot tactical opportunities. While in the past the moves have been relayed live, today chess organizers will often impose a half-hour delay as an anti-cheating measure. Technological progress made in the 1990s and the 21st century has influenced the way that chess is studied at all levels, as well as the state of chess as a
spectator sport. In the mid-to-late 2010s, and especially following the 2020 online boom, it became commonplace for
supergrandmasters, such as
Hikaru Nakamura and
Magnus Carlsen, to
livestream chess content on platforms such as
Twitch. Also following the boom, online chess started being viewed as an
esport, with esport teams signing chess players for the first time in 2020. In 2025, the number of esport teams signing chess players rose considerably, after chess was added to
Saudi Arabia's
Esports World Cup.
Growth The number of
grandmasters and other chess professionals has also grown in the modern era. Kenneth Regan and Guy Haworth conducted research involving comparison of move choices by players of different levels and from different periods with the analysis of strong chess engines. They concluded that the increase in the number of grandmasters and higher Elo ratings of the top players reflect an actual increase in the average standard of play, rather than "rating inflation" or "title inflation". Organized chess even for young children has become common. FIDE holds world championships for age levels down to 8 years old. The largest tournaments, in number of players, are those held for children.
Professional chess of Norway, top 1 FIDE ranked player since July 2011 In 1993, Garry Kasparov and
Nigel Short broke ties with FIDE to organize their own match for the World Championship and formed a competing
Professional Chess Association (PCA). From then until 2006, there were two simultaneous World Championships and respective World Champions: the PCA or "classical" champions extending the Steinitzian tradition in which the current champion plays a challenger in a series of games, and the other following FIDE's new format of many players competing in a large knockout tournament to determine the champion. Kasparov lost his PCA title in
2000 to
Vladimir Kramnik of Russia. Due to the complicated state of world chess politics and difficulties obtaining commercial sponsorships, Kasparov was never able to challenge for the title again. Despite this, he continued to dominate in top level tournaments and remained the world's
highest-rated player until his retirement from competitive chess in 2005. of India, current World Champion The
World Chess Championship 2006, in which Kramnik beat the FIDE World Champion
Veselin Topalov, reunified the titles and made Kramnik the undisputed World Chess Champion. In September 2007, he lost the title to
Viswanathan Anand of India. Anand defended his title in the
revenge match of 2008, 2010 and 2012. Magnus Carlsen defeated Anand in
2013, defending his title in
2014,
2016,
2018, and
2021, whereafter he announced that he would not defend his title a fifth time. The
2023 championship was played between the winner and runner-up of the
Candidates Tournament 2022:
Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia and
Ding Liren of China. Ding beat Nepomniachtchi, making him the world champion. In
2024,
Gukesh Dommaraju of India beat Ding. Carlsen has however remained the world's highest-rated player. ==Connections to other fields==