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Chess

Tabletop and Strategy Game Hobbies
Knight Chess Piece

The sixty-four square strategy game played at kitchen tables, in parks and clubs, and by hundreds of millions online. Descended from the Indian game chaturanga through the Persian and Arab shatranj, it took its modern queen and bishop in fifteenth-century Europe, and it remains the deepest game a household commonly owns. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Hobby Class
Playing 1
Established When (Circa)
Chaturanga is attested in northern India by circa the sixth to seventh century CE; the modern rules settled in Europe circa 1475 to 1500 1
Connections

Associated With

Source FIDE (Wikipedia)
Source Shogi (Wikipedia)
Source World Chess Championship 1886 (Wikipedia)
Source Xiangqi (Wikipedia)

Open Questions

In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Chess (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Introduction, third sentence
    An enemy piece may be captured by moving one's own piece onto the square it occupies.
  • Introduction, history sentence on chaturanga
    The recorded history of chess dates back to the emergence of chaturanga in 7th-century India.
  • Introduction, modern rules sentence
    The modern rules of chess emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, becoming standardized and gaining universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century.
  • Introduction, FIDE sentence
    International chess competitions today are governed by FIDE (French: Fédération Internationale des Échecs, 'International Chess Federation').
  • Competitive chess section, first World Champion sentence
    The first universally recognized World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886
  • Related games section, chaturanga descendants sentence
    Chaturanga is also thought to be an ancestor of similar games like janggi, xiangqi, and shogi.
  • Setup section, board sentence
    Chess is a board game for two players, played on a square board consisting of 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid.
  • Check and checkmate section, object of the game sentence
    The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent; this occurs when the opponent's king is in check, and there is no legal way to get it out of check.
  • History section, spread from Persia sentence
    After its introduction to Persia, it spread to the Arab world and then to Europe.
  • Introduction, Deep Blue sentence
    In 1997, Deep Blue became the first computer to win a match against a reigning World Champion when it defeated Garry Kasparov.
View the Source
About FIDE (International Chess Federation Official Site)
  • About FIDE section, first sentence
    The International Chess Federation (FIDE) is the governing body of the sport of chess, and it regulates all international chess competitions.
  • About FIDE section, founding sentence
    FIDE currently has its headquarters in Lausanne, but it was initially founded in 1924 in Paris under the motto 'Gens una Sumus' (Latin for 'We are one Family').
View the Source
FIDE (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: FIDE, Lead section
Quote, Associated With: FIDE, Lead section
The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation
View the Source
Xiangqi (Wikipedia)
Associated With: Xiangqi, Introduction, related games
Quote, Associated With: Xiangqi, Introduction, related games
Xiangqi is in the same family of games as shogi, janggi, Western chess, chaturanga, and Indian chess.
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Shogi (Wikipedia)
Associated With: Shogi, Introduction, second sentence
Quote, Associated With: Shogi, Introduction, second sentence
It is one of the most popular board games in Japan and is in the same family of games as Western chess, chaturanga, xiangqi, Indian chess, makruk, and janggi.
View the Source
Open Questions (1 open question)
Where and when did chess actually originate?

The conventional account derives chess from chaturanga in Gupta-era northern India around the sixth to seventh century CE, but the earliest physical pieces, the earliest unambiguous textual references and the relationships among chaturanga, the Chinese game xiangqi and Central Asian play are all thin enough that scholars have seriously proposed Indian, Chinese and Central Asian origins, and the debate has run for more than a century without a decisive find.

What would resolve this Securely dated early game pieces or texts that tie a recognizable ancestor of chess to one region and period, or philological work that settles the direction of borrowing among the early chess-family games.
Archaeology, Philology, Board game historyChess (Wikipedia)
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