Chess. The game of chess , which everyone knows and which very few play well, is the most erudite of all the games wherein the intellect takes part. It is also the game in which the power and depth of the game's spirit is most easily observed. See Game.

Each player has sixteen pieces divided in six classes, whose names, moves, and worth are different. They are placed in two lines of eight pieces each on a chessboard divided into sixty-four places, or squares, which can hold but one piece at a time. Each player has a unique piece called the king . The fate of the game depends on the conservation or loss of this piece. The king may not be taken so long as he still has some method of evading the moves made against him. There is no question at all of surprise in this war; players are warned of the danger their king is in by the word check , and thus they are obliged to change his place, if such is possible, to save themselves from the danger that threatens him. If there remains no other way of avoiding the danger, then the king falls into the hands of the enemy attacking him, and by the taking of the king, the game is decided; this is expressed by the term checkmate .

Such is a general idea of the game's design; its excellence has tempted many writers to seek its origins, but the Greek and Latin erudition that they have employed in such abundance on the issue has nonetheless brought so little enlightenment that the field is still open to new conjectures. This is what brought Mr. Freret to propose his own in a treatise printed by the men of the Academy of Belles-Lettres, a summary of which informs this article. "I study, with Montaigne, a variety of authors, to strengthen the opinions I have already formed, to second and to serve them."

Numerous experts have concluded that we must go back to the siege of Troy to find the origins of chess; they have attributed its invention to Palamedes the Greek captain who died by the trickery of Ulysses. Others, rejecting this opinion—which in fact is without any foundation—are satisfied to claim that the game of chess had been known by the Greeks and the Romans, and that we received it from them, but the game of soldiers, latrunculi , that of knucklebones, calculi , and scrupuli , that they take to be chess, have no resemblance at all to this game, particularly in those things that constitute its essence, and that distinguish chess from all the other games of checkers, morris, and knucklebones , with which they confound it. See Checkers, Knucklebones, etc.

In the West, the first authors who spoke incontestably of chess are our old romance-writers, or the writers of those fabulous stories of the knights of the round table, and the brave men of the court of King Arthur, the Twelve Peers of France, and the paladins of the emperor Charlemagne.

It should also be noted that when romance-writers spoke of the Saracens, they described them as very skilled at the game. Princess Anna Comnena informs us that during the life of her father, Alexis Comnenus, emperor of Constantinople during the eleventh century, the game of chess passed from the Persians to the Greeks; she called it zatrikion . Thus we must consult Oriental writers on the origin of this game.

The Persians concede that they are not its inventors, and that they received it from the Indians, who carried it to Persia during the reign of Chosroes, called the Great , at the beginning of the sixth century. On the other side, the Chinese also know chess ; they call it the elephant game , and they acknowledge that they take it from the Indians, from whom they received it in the sixth century. The Hai-Pien , or the great dictionary of the Chinese, says that this was during the reign of Vouti , around the year 537 BC. Thus it cannot be doubted that it the game was invented in the Indies: From here it was carried to both the Orient and the Occident.

Let us now say briefly that the Arab authors recount the manner in which this game was invented.

In the Indies in the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era, there was a very powerful young monarch, of an excellent character, but his flatterers had perversely corrupted him. This young monarch soon forgot that kings must be the fathers of their people, that the love of the subjects for their king is the sole solid foundation of the throne, and that they are the whole of his power and might. The Brahmins and the rajahs, that is to say the priests and the nobles, reiterated these great maxims to him in vain; the monarch, drunk on his own grandeur, which he believed to be unshakeable, disdained their wise appeals. Then a Brahmin, or an Indian philosopher, named Sissa endeavored indirectly to open the young prince's eyes. To that end he invented the game of chess, in which the king, while he is the most important of all the pieces, is powerless to attack and even to defend himself from his enemies without the help of his subjects.

The new game soon became famous; the king of the Indies heard talk of it and wanted to learn it. As he explained the rules to him, the Brahmin Sissa saw him appreciate important truths that he had refused to hear up to that moment.

The prince, sensible and full of understanding, changed his conduct, and left the Brahmin the choice of a reward. The Brahmin requested that he be given the number of grains of wheat that the squares of the chessboard would produce if one grain were placed on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so forth, doubling each time until the sixty-fourth. The king saw no difficulty in acceding immediately to the reasonableness of this request. But when his treasurers had made the calculation, they saw that the king had undertaken something for which all the treasures in his vast estates were quite insufficient. Indeed, they found that the sum of these grains of wheat would amount to 16384 cities, each of which contained 1024 granaries, each of which contained 174762 measures, and in each measure 32768 grains. Then the Brahmin took the occasion once more to show the prince how important it is for kings to be on guard against those who surround them, and how much they should fear that someone might abuse their best intentions.

The game of chess did not remain isolated in India for very long; it passed to Persia during the reign of Chosroes, but under singular circumstances that the Persian historians have conserved for us—and that we will here omit. It will be enough to say that the name of schatreingi or schatrak , that is given to it signfies the game of schach or of kings : The Greeks styled it that of zatrikion , and the Spanish, to whom the Arabs brought it, changed it into the game of axedres , or al xadres .

The Latins termed it scaccorum ludus , from which comes the Italian scacchi . Our ancestors were less removed from the Oriental pronunciation, in calling it the game of échecs [ie, chess], which is to say, of the king . Schah in Persian, and schek in Arabic, signifies king or lord . The term check has been conserved, and it is employed to warn the enemy king to guard itself from the danger to which it is exposed: The term checkmate comes from the Persian term schakmat , which is to say the king is taken , and this is the formula employed to alert the enemy king that he can no longer hope for rescue.

The names of several of the pieces of this game have no reasonable meaning in the languages of the Orient. The second piece of chess , after the king, is today called the queen or the lady ; but she has not always carried this name: In the Latin poetry of the twelfth century she is called sercia . Our Old French poets, such as the author of the Roman de la Rose , name this piece fierce , fierche, and fierge , words that are corruptions of the Latin fercia , which itself comes from the Persian ferz , which is in Persian the name of this piece, signifying minister of state , a vizier .

The taste for moralizing on all sorts of subjects that was common during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries caused the game of chess to be seen as an image of human life. In these writings, the chess pieces are compared to the different social stations, and from their movements, their names, and their appearance were taken occasions to moralize unendingly in the manner of those days. But soon it appeared that this tableau would be an imperfect image of human life if no woman was to be found; this sex plays far too important a role not to be given a place in the game: Thus the minister of state, the vizier or ferz , was changed into a lady , a queen , and gradually, as a result of the gallantry so natural to the nations of the West, the lady , the queen became the most considerable piece in the game.

The third piece in chess is the fool ; among the Orientals it has the shape of an elephant and carries its name as well, fil .

The knights , which are the fourth piece of chess , have the same shape and the same name in all countries: The name that we use is a translation of the name the Arabs give it.

The fifth piece of chess is today called the rook ; in olden days it was called the castle , from which the term castling originates. This piece figures in the coats of arms of some ancient families, and there it has conserved the name roc as well as its former shape, which is rather like the one the Mohammedans give it, for they do not use figurative chess pieces. Just as we do, the Orientals name it rokh , and the Indians give it the shape of a camel mounted by a knight with a bow and arrow in hand. The term rok , common to the Persians and the Indians, signifies in the language of the latter a sort of camel that is used in warfare and that is placed on the wing of the army to serve as a light cavalry. The rapid stride of this piece, which jumps from one end of the chessboard to the other, agrees so well with this idea that in the beginning it was the only piece that could move this way.

The sixth or the last piece is the pawn , or the infantryman , which has endured no changes, and which represents, in the Indies as it does here, the simple soldiers of which the army is composed.

These are the names of pieces in the game of chess , let us now explain the rules, which will be easy to follow by arranging the pieces on the chessboard in the manner that we shall indicate.

I mentioned above that in the game of chess there are sixteen white pieces on one side and sixteen black pieces on the other. Of these sixteen pieces, eight are large and eight are small: The large ones include the king, the queen , or lady ; the two fools , one called the king's fool , one called the queen's fool ; the two knights , one being the king's , one the queen's ; and the two rooks , or towers , of the king and the queen . These eight large pieces are placed on the eight squares of the first line of the chessboard, which must be placed such that the last square on the right hand, where one places the rook , is white.

The eight small pieces are the eight pawns , that occupy the squares of the second line. The pawns take their names from the large pieces that they sit in front of: For example, the pawn that is in front of the king is called the king's pawn ; that which is in front of the queen is called the queen's pawn ; the pawn in front of the king's fool or the queen's fool , the king's knight or the queen's knight , the king's rook or the queen's rook , is called the king's fool's pawn, the queen's fool's pawn, the king's knight's pawn, the queen's knight's pawn, the king's rook's pawn , or the queen's rook's pawn.

The square where the king is placed is called the king's square ; the square of his pawn is called the king's second square ; that which is in front of the pawn, the king's third square , and the one in front of it, the king's fourth square . It is the same with all the squares of the first line, each of which retain the name of the large pieces that occupy them, as it is with the other squares, which are called the second, third, and fourth square of the queen , the king's fool, the queen's fool , and so forth.

The king is the first and the most important piece of the game; it is placed in the middle of the first rank. If it is the white king, it occupies the fourth black square; if it is the black king, it is placed on the fourth black square, the one facing the other. Its move is like all of the other pieces except for the knight. The king moves only one square at a time, except for when he jumps: Then he may jump two squares, but this in one of only two ways (none of the others being at all in use); namely either to his own side, or to the side of the queen. When he jumps to his own side, he is placed on the king's knight's square, and the king's rook is placed next to him, on the square of the king's fool; and when he jumps to the queen's side, he is placed on the queen's fool's square, and the queen's rook on the square of the queen: The jump that the king makes is called castling .

There are five situations where the king may not jump; the first, is while there is some piece between him and the rook of the side where he wishes to go; the second, when that rook has already moved; the third, when the king has had to move; the fourth, when he is in check , and the fifth, when the square over which he wishes to jump is in the range of an enemy piece that would give him check in passing. Although the kings have the power to travel to all squares, never may the two of them stand side by side; a distance of at least one square is necessary between them.

The white queen is placed on the fourth white square, to the left of her king; the black queen is placed on the fourth black square, to the right of her king. The queen may travel in straight lines or diagonally, like the pawn, the fool, and the rook; with one move she may travel from one end of the chessboard to the other, provided that the path is clear: She may also capture from all sides, lengthwise, widthwise, and diagonally, from near or from far, according to the needs of the game.

The fools are placed one next to the king, one next to the queen. They only move diagonally, such that the fool placed on the white square always moves on white squares and the fool whose square is black travels on black squares alone. They may move and capture from right and left and return likewise, so long as they find it clear.

The knights are posted one next to the king's fool, the other beside the queen's fool. Their movement is completely different from that of the other pieces: Their step is oblique, always going three spaces at a time, from white to black and from black to white, even jumping over the other pieces. The king's knight has three exit squares, namely the king's second square, the king's fool's third square, and also the king's rook's third square. The queen's knight can also begin at three different spots; by the queen's second square, by the queen's fool's third square, and by the third of her rook: This is provided that the squares are empty; if however they are occupied by some enemy piece, the knight may take it. The knight has two advantages that are unique to him: The first is that when he gives check , the king cannot be shielded by another piece and is forced to move; the second, that he can enter into play and leave it no matter how tight and well-guarded it may be.

The rooks are situated on the two extremities of the row, next to the knights: they have only a single movement, which is always straight, but with one move they can travel the length of the row that is before them, or the length of the row beside them, and they may take a piece that they find in their way. The rook is the most considerable piece of the game after the queen, for with the king alone a rook may give checkmate , which cannot be given with either the fool or the knight.

The eight pawns are placed on the eight squares of the second rank: Their movement is straight from one square to the next: They never move diagonally, except to capture a piece. They have the power to move two squares at a time, but only on their first move they make, after which they may only move one square at a time. When a pawn reaches one of the squares on the last row of the chessboard, which is the enemy's first line, it is made into a queen, with all the powers, advantages, and properties of the queen. And if the pawn gives check , the king must move from its square. It must also be noted that the pawn may not move two squares at once on its first move if the square that it would pass is attacked by an enemy pawn. For example, if the white king's knight's pawn is on the fourth rank of the black king's knight, the black king's fool's pawn may not move two squares, for it would pass over the square that is attacked by the white king's knight's pawn, which could take it in passing. The same may be said of all the other pawns; nonetheless the opposite practice arises sometimes, and chiefly in Italy, where this form of play is called to pass the battle .  [1]

The manner in which the pieces of the game capture one another is not by jumping over each other, as it checkers, nor by beating back the pieces, as in trictrac, but rather the piece that captures is placed on the square of the piece that is taken, and the latter is removed from the chessboard.

Check is a move that puts the king in danger, but since the rules of the game dictate that he may not be captured, a player says this word to avert him to leave the square where he is, or to shield himself with another of his pieces, for, as mentioned above, captures are not made by jumping. Double check occurs when the king receives check from two pieces at once; he may not escape it except by moving or by capturing one of the two pieces without still being in check from the other. The draw , or stalemate , is when the king, having no other pieces that may move, finds himself surrounded by enemy pieces without being in check, and cannot change squares without putting himself into check . In this case, there is neither a win nor a loss, and the game must begin again.

Blind check and blind mate are called when one of the players wins without realizing it, and without saying so in the moment that he does. If the game is being played strictly, he wins but half what he has wagered. [2] Now checkmate is the end of the game, wherein the king finds himself in check on the square where he rests and can neither move from that place without remaining in check nor shield himself with any of his other pieces: It is then that he rests defeated and must surrender.

It is easy to imagine how difficult the game is, given the number of pieces, the variance of their moves, and the number of squares. Nonetheless in Paris there is a young man eighteen years of age who played two games of chess at once without looking at the chessboards, and who defeated two players far above mediocre strength, to whom he could offer less than a knight's handicap while looking at the board, although he himself is of the highest strength. We should ad to this fact an incident of which we were eyewitnesses: In the middle of one of these games, someone played an illegal move on purpose, and after a rather large number of intervening moves, he recognized the illegal one and asked that the piece be returned to the square where it belonged. This young man's name is M. Philidor; he is the son of a musician of some reputation and is himself a great musician, as well as perhaps the strongest player of Polish checkers that ever was, and perhaps that ever will be. This is one of the most extraordinary examples of the power of memory and imagination. He now lives in Paris.

The pieces of the game of chess are made of bone, of ivory, or of wood, shaped differently to distinguish them, and likewise, each side recognizes its pieces by their color. In olden days, chess was played with figurative pieces like the ones conserved in the treasury of Saint-Denis. Today's pieces are of the greatest simplicity.

It is remarkable how many men of letters are interested in discovering the origins of this game; I shall limit myself to citing a Spaniard, an Italian, and a Frenchman. Lojes de Segura, De la Invention del juego del axedres: His book was printed in Alcala in 1661, in quarto. Dominico Tarsia, De l'Invenzione degli scacchi , in Venise in octavo. Opinions du nom et du jeu des échets , by M. Sarrasin, Paris, in duodecimo. Let us not forget an appealing Latin poem by Jerome Vida, translated into our language by M. Louis des Mazures.

The Chinese have made several changes to the game; they have introduced new pieces called cannons or mortars . The rules of their chess can be found in the description of Siam by M. de la Loubere, and in the book by the scholar Hyde, De Ludis orientalium . Tamerlane made even greater changes to the game: By the new pieces he invented and the moves that he gave them, he augmented the difficulty of a game that was already too complicated to count as a form of relaxation. But in Europe, the old way of playing is still followed, wherein from time to time we have had quite excellent masters, including Lord Boi, commonly known as The Syracusean , who was held in high esteem for his chessplaying ability at the court of Spain during the reign of Philip II. And in the last century there was Gioacchino Greco, known as Calabrois , who could not find his equal in the game among the various courts of Europe. From the style of these two champions' play several fragments have been gathered, from which there has been composed a regular body of practical chess theory, entitled the Calabrois . It is quite easy to add to it.

But the book is scarcely studied today; chess has more or less generally fallen out of fashion, and other tastes, other manners of wasting one's time, in a word, other, less excusable frivolities have succeeded it. If Montaigne were still with us, he would have approved of the fall of chess , since he found the game annoying and childish. Cardinal Cajétan, who reasoned no better on the matter, placed it among the forbidden games because it was too demanding.

On the contrary, other people, struck by how chance has no part in the game, and how skill alone is victorious, have regarded good chess players as gifted with superior capacities: But if this reasoning were correct, why do we see so many mediocrities, and even near imbeciles, who excel at it, while very great geniuses of all the orders and estates have been unable to attain even mediocrity? Let us conclude that, here as elsewhere, a habit acquired in youth, a continual practice limited to one sole end, a machine-like memory for combinations and the conduct of the pieces fortified by exercise, and ultimately what we might call a talent for the game , are the source of ability in chess , and do not indicate any other talents or merit in the same man. See Game.

Notes

1. Translator's note: Modern chess follows the Italian rule, with the added rule that a pawn that passes the attack of an enemy pawn is subject to capture by that pawn. This is called capture en passant , a term that means "in passing" in French.

2. Note that this is the first mention of gambling in the article, as though it were taken for granted that chess would be played for stakes.