Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - All About Chess

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

It is arguably the world’s oldest game, yet it is one of the most popular cybersports. It has been called the game of kings, and yet it can be mastered by children. Its origins are truly global having passed through several of the world’s greatest civilizations, and it can and is played almost everywhere on Earth. I am of course talking about chess. Learn more about chess, where the game came from, and how it is played today, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is arguably the world's oldest game, yet it's one of the most popular cybersports. It's been called the Game of Kings, and yet it can be mastered by children. Its origins are truly global, having passed through several of the world's greatest civilizations, and it can and is played almost everywhere on Earth. I am, of course, talking about chess. Learn more about chess, where the game came from, and how it's played today, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep, only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hit

the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts.

Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. The origins of chess go way back, and the place where the game originated often surprises many people. Chess is usually thought of as being a European game, and while there are elements that were developed in Europe, more on that in a bit, the game that we know as chess actually originated in India. The original game in India was known as Chaturanga, and it's believed to have been developed in northwest India about 1,500 years ago. If you look at a Chaturanga board, you'll probably mistake it for a chess board at first glance.

The board itself is an 8-square-by-eight-eight-square grid, just like a chessboard. Each side has 16 pieces. The front row pieces are all the same, just like pawns. The back row has different pieces which all correspond to pieces in chess. The fundamental difference between Chaturanga and Chess is that the piece, which is the equivalent of the king, are not directly in line from each other, and some of the other pieces have different movements. Chaturanga comes from the Sanskrit word for meaning four-limbed, which is a reference to the four types of military units used in ancient India. Infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots.

The infantry is the equivalent of pawns. The chariots are the equivalent of rooks. Calvary is the equivalent of knights, and elephants were the equivalent to bishops. While we know the game at least dates back to the Gupta Empire, some people believe that the game may date back to the first several centuries BC. From its origin in India, Chattarenga spread both east and west. In each direction, the game evolved differently. In Japan, it became known as the game of Shogi, which is played on a 9-by-9 board. In China, it became known as Shanxi, or as it's often known in the West as Chinese chess.

Shanxi is very similar to chess, except the pieces are all flat-like checkers. with Chinese characters indicating the type of piece, and the pieces all move on the lines and vertices of the board, not in the middle of the squares. Likewise, there are chess variants in Thailand called Makruk, and in Korea there's one called Zhangji, which is derived from the Chinese game, Shangxi. The modern game we know today came from the variant of the game

which spread to the west. The first place west of India to adopt the game was in Persia. The Persians called it Chhatrang, which is clearly derived from the Indian Sanskrit, Chaturanga. There are records of 10th century games that were being played and an 11th century book written on the subject. As Persia was Muslim at the time, the pieces changed to more abstract images because of the Islamic prohibition of depicting humans or animals and art. From Persia, the game was picked up by Arab traders and spread the proud

Arabia. The game became known as Chhatranj or Chantanjou. This iteration of the game, again, looked very similar to modern chess. The Arabs introduced the concept of a Czech, which was a warning when the king was in danger. The name king was called the Shah, which means king and Persian. And it moved exactly the same as a king does today. By the way, the English word check actually comes from the Persian Shah, and Checkmate comes from Shah Mott, which meant the king is dead. Next to the king was the furs or the vizier, which meant counselor. It moved just like a king, and it wasn't a very powerful piece. The other piece which was different was the pill, which meant elephant and Persian, which could move two spaces diagonally, and that was the equivalent of a bishop. Chess entered Europe

through several different channels. Arabs spread the game to the Byzantine Empire, who may have introduced it to Eastern Europe and probably Russia as well. Arab traders also brought the game to southern Italy, and it was then brought to what is today Spain via the Moorish conquests. By the 13th century, chess was all over Europe. Modifications to the game, which turned it into the game we recognize today, began to appear.

The board developed alternating colored squares instead of each square being the same color as in the Arab version of the game. Likewise, the queen replaced the vizier, and a bishop replaced the elephant. Chess became extremely popular in Europe during the Middle Ages. In fact, it became so popular that it drew the ire of the Catholic Church. Church authorities condemned chess as gambling, and also because it often led to violence. Louis V. 9th of France issued an edict banning chess playing for money,

a rule which was almost totally ignored by everyone and was totally unenforceable. By the year 1500, chess as we know it, had been codified. The movement of queens and bishops was established in Spain and soon spread all over Europe. The default colors of the pieces were set as black and white, whereas they used to be red and black. Castling was also established as a rule. If you were to go back to the year 1500, you could probably play chess with anyone in Europe if you knew the current rules of the game. There were only minor differences with the game today. Once the rules were established, more people began thinking and writing about the game.

Books were written about chess that discussed openings and games in theory, most famously by a Spanish bishop by the name of Rui Lopez de Seguera. He wrote a book called The Book of Liberal Invention and the Art of the Game of Chess, which was published in 1561. The last rules to be solidified were in the 19th century, and those were rules regarding stalemates and establishing that White will always go first. The 19th century also saw more organization of the activity. Chess clubs blossomed and chess tournaments became more formal affairs. As chess became more formalized, a problem soon developed.

Some players would take forever to make a move. At one tournament in London in 1851, a player took two hours and 20 minutes to move a single piece. In this light, time limits were added to chess, and new variants with extremely short time limits were created. This led to the creation of chess clocks, where a player would hit a button that would stop their clock and start the clock of their opponent. The 19th century also saw the rise of the first chess prodigies. The first and greatest of the 19th century was probably the American Paul Morphy. between 1849 and 1863, in every notable recorded game that he played, he lost only twice and had won stalemate. In 1859, he was declared the world champion and the greatest chess player in history by acclamation.

There was no official world championship tournament at this point. The first official world championship to be determined via a tournament occurred in 1886. It was won by William Steinitz, an Austrian who later moved to the United States. He did not lose a match from 1862 to 1894. When he did lose in 1894, it was for the World Championship, and the winner of the game was Emmanuel Lasker from Germany, who held the title for 27 years. He eventually lost the title in 1921 to another chess prodigy,

Jose Raoul Capablanca of Cuba, who is considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Throughout the 20th century, chess became more and more advanced. Chess games could be recorded on paper, and the library of past games of grandmasters that could be studied kept growing. More books and theories of chess were developed, and much of what went into becoming a great chess player came down to study and memorization. The International Chess Federation, or FIDE, was established in 1994,

which became the world governing body for chess. It organizes the world championship, as well as other international competitions and events. One of the biggest innovations to competitive chess in the 20th century was the development of the ELO rating system. It was developed by a Hungarian-American physicist and chess player named RAPAD ELO. The system was designed to take into consideration all games played against other rated players. Everyone starts with a score of 1,000, and then it goes up or down based on if you win or lose. If a player with a low rating beats a player with a much higher rating, their rating will go up by a significant amount.

However, if a good player beats a bad player, their rating will barely go up at all. In theory, players with similar rankings should be at roughly similar skill levels. and skill level should determine the odds of one player beating another. The ELO ranking system was first used in 1960 by the United States Chess Federation, and then officially adopted by the FIDE in 1970. The system today is used for qualifying for tournaments, as well as for titles such as Grand Master. The highest ELO score in history was 2882, which was achieved by world champion Magnus Carlson in May of 2014.

The ELO ranking system has proven so popular that it is now being used by many different sports and competitive events. Almost as soon as programmers were able to, they were writing programs to play chess. For years, people wondered if or when a computer would ever be able to beat a world champion. That finally happened in 1997, when IBM's Deep Blue beat the world champion, Gary Kasparov. One of the problems which has developed at the highest ranks of chess is that all of the top players now spend so much time studying

and have powerful chess computers to help them train that stalemates are becoming the norm. At the 2018 World Chess Championship, all 12 games resulted in a stalemate. At the 2016 World Championship, 10 of the 12 games resulted in a stalemate. At the 2021 World Championship, what shocked most people is that the match didn't have to go the full 12 games because defending champion Magnus Carlson actually won three games. This problem was identified in the early 1970s by then-world champion Bobby Fisher. One of the things which has been done to correct the problem has been a rise in the popularity of different chess variants. Bobby Fisher created his own variant where the pieces on the

back row were randomly placed. This is known as Fisher Random Chess or Chess 960, to reflect the 960 possible starting combinations. The pieces are arranged the same for both players. The appeal of the game is that you can't study opening moves for 960 different opening positions. It makes the game more about intuition and skill, not about memorizing and training. There is actually a Fisher Random Chess World Championship, which is now sponsored by the FIDE. The other variants which have become very popular are called speed chess. There are three primary types of speed chess, rapid chess, Blitz Chess, and Bullet Chess.

At the FIDE World Championships in Rapid Chess, each player has 15 minutes total to make their moves. In FIDE Blitz Chess, each player has a total of three minutes to make all of their moves. Bullet Chess, sometimes called Lightning Chess, has time limits under three minutes. In Blitz and Bullet Chess, pieces are constant. being moved almost nonstop, whereas in traditional chess, it's usually just looking at players looking at a board. Not surprisingly, the best players at speed chess and random chess also tend to be the best players at traditional chess. Magnus Carlson, for example, has won world championships

at Rapid and Blitz Chess, and was the runner-up at the Fisher Random Chess World Championship. There has been a resurgence in chess over the last several years. This has been due almost entirely to the internet. Many top chess players are making themselves more available on chess websites, and have their own streaming channels on Twitch where people can watch them play as well as your commentary. As chess doesn't actually require a physical board to play, it is a natural for the internet. Chess is an ancient game with a truly global pedigree.

However, even though the origins of the game date back at least 1,500 years and the rules of the modern game go back a full 500 years, there's still innovation occurring today in the world of chess. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please join the list of patrons over at patreon.com. And also remember, if you leave a review or send me a question,

you two can have it read on the show. Modern chess openings? It's the best book for you. It will tell you all you want to know. You'll need to learn chess notation before you can read it. The names of the squares. I'll teach you now. Am I good enough now?

How old are you? Nine. Nine years old. I'll be ten on November. I'll tell you the truth of a child. You're astounding.