CHESS

    
      The history of chess spans some 1500 years. The earliest predecessors of the game originated in India, before the 6th century AD. From India, the game spread to Persia. When the Arabs conquered Persia, chess was taken up by the Muslim world and subsequently spread to Southern Europe. In Europe, chess evolved into its current form in the 15th century. In the second half of the 19th century, modern chess tournament play began, and the first world Chess was held in 1886. The 20th century saw great leaps forward in chess theory and the establishment of the World Chess Federation (FIDE). Developments in the 21st century include use of computers for analysis, which originated in the 1970s with the first programmed chess games on the market. Online gaming appeared in the mid 1990's.
       The earliest precursor of modern chess is a game called chaturanga, which flourished in India by the 6th century, and is the earliest known game to have two essential features found in all later chess variations — different pieces having different powers, and victory depending on the fate of one piece, the king of modern chess. Other game piece uncovered in archaeological findings are considered as coming from other, distantly related, board games, which may have had boards of 100 squares or more. Findings in the Mohenjo-daroHarrapa  sites of the Indus Valley Civilization show a prevalence of a board game that resembles chess. and
Chess was designed for an ashtāpada, which may have been used earlier for a backgomman-type race game Other Indian boards included the 10×10 Dasapada and the 9×9 Saturankam. Traditional Indian chessboards often have X markings on some or all of squares a1 a4 a5 a8 d1 d4 d5 d8 e1 e4 e5 e8 h1 h4 h5 h8: these may have been "safe squares" where capturing was not allowed in a dice-driven backgammon-type race game played on the ashtāpada before chess was invented. Ashtāpada, the uncheckered 8×8 board served as the main board for playing Chaturanga.
The Cox- Forbes Theory, started in the late 19th century, mainly from the works of Captain Hiram Cox and Duncan Forbes, proposed that the four-handed game chaturaji was the original form of chaturanga. Other scholars dispute this and say that the two-handed form was the first.
In Sanskrit, "chaturanga"  literally means "having four limbs " and in epic peotry often means "army". The name came from a battle formation mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata. The game Chaturanga was a battle simulation game which rendered Indian military strategy of the time.
Some people formerly played chess using a dice to decide which piece to move. There was an unproven theory that chess started as this dice-chess and that the gambling and dice aspects of the game were removed because of Hindu religious objections.
Scholars in areas to which the game subsequently spread, for example the Arab Abu al- Hassan al- Mas'udi, detailed the Indian use of chess as a tool for military strategy, mathematics, gambling and even its vague association with astronomy Mas'ūdī notes that ivory in India was chiefly used for the production of chess and backgammon pieces, and asserts that the game was introduced to Persia from India, along with the book Kelileh va Demneh, during the reign of emperor Nushriwan.
In some variants, a win was by checkmate, or by stalement, or by "bare king".
In some parts of India the pieces in the places of the Rook and Knight and Bishop were renamed by words meaning  Boat, Horse, Elephant, or Elephant, Horse, Camel, but keeping the same moves.
In early chess the moves of the pieces were:

• King: as now.
• Queen: one square diagonally, only.
• Bishop:
  • In the version that went into Persia: two squares diagonally, but could jump over a piece between
  • In a version sometimes found in India in former times: two squares sideways or front-and-back, but could jump over a piece between.
  • In versions found in Southeast Asia: one square diagonally, or one square forwards.
• Knight: as now.
• Rook: as now.
• Pawn: one square forwards, capturing one square diagonally forward; promoted to queen only.

Two Arab travelers each recorded a severe Indian chess rule against stalement.

• A stalemated player thereby at once wins.
• A stalemated king can take one of the enemy pieces that would check the king if the king moves.