History of Chess?

>>2473507
I looked into this a while back but couldnt find many definitive answers.
I was looking to try and find historical reasons why the pieces move like they do, and how they ended up in their respective positions.
Keeping an eye on this thread but unfortunately cant contribute too much other than that its a game that originated in the middle east.

I always had a feeling that the original goal of the game was just to capture the opposing king rather than checkmating it. Then as people got smarter and better at the game and realized you have to immediately move your king out of the way of enemy pieces, the goal sot of evolved into putting the opposing king into an inescapable situation, ie checkmate.

Of course I haven't found anything to confirm this, just a thought.

Not much is known. It originated in India and moved east and west. West (in the Arab world) it became Shatranj (basically the original Chatruanga) and from there Courier Chess to our modern version with the mad queen, ungimped bishop, castling, etc. Rooks, knights, and kings have always had the same moves.

And to the East it became Shogi and Xiang Qi.

But there isn't a whole lot known about the origins or anything. Whatever ya find with a simple Google search is pretty much all we know. And a lot is guesswork and speculation.

There's the chessvariants site where you can play a bunch of them. Honorable mention to Byzantine chess which is basically Shatranj on a round board.

As for castling: no. It wasn't always a thing. That's actually pretty new and I think happened at around the same time we started letting pawns make an initial two step move.

Pawn promotion was always a thing, but always handled differently. For some it was any piece the enemy took, for some it could become any piece regardless of what your enemy captured, games differed on what rank it could promote, and some like Xiang Qi have no pawn promotion at all and your pawn basically slides around uselessly if he hits the last rank.

>>2473545

That's actually correct. It was even vital to Chaturanga because there was no stalemate, so your king had to move into check and get taken. Once it came back west with the Arabs, concepts like stalemate became losses for the player stalemated and a win for the player stalemating unlike the draws of today. But the original goal was to take the king before things like check and checkmate became a thing. Basically people cut down the formality of bothering to have to take the king when he has no choice but to lose.

But it does make for some odd games when your opponent flubs and the game ends prematurely.

Pretty much all traditional gaming is as old as dirt.

Chess, checkers, dice, playing cards, what have you. No real way to put a solid date on any of it, all we can confirm is that ancient people got bored too.

>>2473593
True. There have been Magic: The Gathering cards discovered in ancient Judaea

>>2473618
Playing cards you dolt, the traditional 52 card decks I mean, not trading cards.

>>2473625
I wasn't being snarky pham I was just making a jokey joke

>>2473507
>most notable players

well I always had a soft spot for Tal because he was so agressive and just seemed to have fun on the board

and also Karpov because his moves are weird as hell. With other chess players you sort of get what they are doing and trying to do. Karpovs moves just baffle me yet he managed to win vs the best players of the time

>>2473700
What makes Karpov's play so inexplicable? I always found him fairly straightforward myself. Someone like Botvinnik is way weirder. Karpov's just inhumanly patient, that's all.

>>2473700

>karpovs moves are weird

>not tal who made a habit of doing crazy shit and pulling out a win anyway

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>>2473593
>traditional gaming is as old as dirt.
Nah, /tg/ dates back to autistic grown European men - including legit military officers- buying tin soldiers and making up rules for them.

HG Wells penned the first rulebook.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Chess

>>2473716
Those guys would probably be playing some variant of RTS, Grand Strat, or SRPG were they born in this age.

Or Warhammer if we're sticking with /tg/ stuff.

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Fuck chess, Stratego is where its at.