Chess began as Indian chaturanga in the seventh century
Chess pits two armies of sixteen pieces on an 8×8 board under FIDE’s global rules. Seventh-century Indian chaturanga is the earliest documented ancestor, kin to xiangqi, shogi, and janggi. Persia and the Islamic world transmitted it westward; nineteenth-century clubs birthed organized titles, with Wilhelm Steinitz first universally recognized world champion.
Each army holds eight pawns plus a pair each of knights, bishops and rooks, a single queen and the king, every type moving in its own pattern, and a piece is captured by landing on its square. The aim is checkmate, an inescapable threat to the enemy king, though games can also be drawn in several ways. The modern rules took shape in Europe in the late fifteenth century and were standardised and accepted everywhere by the end of the nineteenth.
White lines up rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook along the first rank with pawns in front, and Black mirrors it. The nearest right-hand corner must be light, so the white queen begins on a light square, captured in the sayings white on the right and queen on her colour. Staunton-pattern pieces are standard and usually required in competition. Casual players often pick colours by hiding a pawn of each colour in their fists; at a 2001 US–China match in Seattle, first-round colours were settled by a game of Jenga, which China won.
FIDE's Handbook sets the rules, and national bodies may differ in details; the United States Chess Federation split from FIDE over time-keeping in the 1980s. Steinitz took his title in 1886, and the current champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, won it in 2024.
Chess has a huge body of theory, an artistic side in composition, and ties to mathematics, computer science and psychology. Early computer scientists wanted a chess machine, and in 1997 Deep Blue beat reigning champion Garry Kasparov in a match. Engines now far outplay humans and have reshaped theory, yet chess remains unsolved.
Source: Chess
