In my travelling days, Chess always accompanied me. From Chichicastenango to Makati, from Tangiers to Iraklion, Chess was also a passport. I played with people that I could not otherwise have communicated with. I was never a strong player and have been defeated by some of the world's most mediocre players. I do, however, enjoy sharpening up with a few games every so often and reading stories about the masters. Here is a brief sketch of this intriguing game.
*Chess, which was called Chaturanga, became popular in the Gupta Era. In the 6th century, there were four divisions of military pieces: i. e. Infantry, Cavalry, Elephants, and Chariots. Those pieces would evolve into the modern Pawn, Knight, Bishop, and Rook, respectively. Chess was also popular in early Persia, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Chess was introduced to Persia from India and became a part of the Princely or Courtly education of Persian Nobility. The game was taken up by the Muslim world after the Islamic conquest of Persia, with the playing pieces largely keeping their Persian names. In Sassanid Persia, around AD 600, the name became Chatrang, which subsequently evolved to Shatranj, due to Arab Muslims' lack of "ch" and "ng" native sounds. And the rules were developed further. Chess was again redefined during Rajputana Era. Later, during the rule of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals, it was named Satranj.
The Colonial rule in India introduced modern day Chess. Chess received the patronage of the native Princes and the Governor-Generals of the British East India Company. Some of the rulers of the Princely States of India excelled in Chess at the International level. Mir Sultan Khan of Punjab not only won the British Chess Championship in 1929, 1932 and 1933 but also represented Britain in three Chess Olympiads.
After the Independence of India in 1947, the All India Chess Federation was founded in 1951 and the first official National Chess Championship was held at Eluru in the West Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh. Initially, the National Chess Championship was held every alternate year, but since 1971, it is being held every year.*
The first reference in literature to the game of Chess is from 550 A. D. The game of Chess apparently began in India and was brought to Persia. From there it conquered the Islamic world and was brought to Spain and Italy by the Arabs. In Europe, during the latter years of the fifteenth century, the game of Chess was again altered. Three new changes were adopted by all European players.
The British allowed a Pawn to have a choice of advancing one or two squares on its first move. In response, the French introduced a move, known as en passant. The French alteration gave the option of choosing to capture a Pawn that has moved two squares in its first move and in so doing has passed an opposing Pawn. The French correctly and fairly reasoned that the moved Pawn would have formerly been vulnerable to capture if it had proceeded only one square at a time, as had been the case originally. A balancing of risk with advantage was the result.
The next major change to the ancient rules of Chess was that the Queen was allowed the freedom to move as a Bishop and as a Castle. She thus became the most powerful piece on the board. She could now move any number of squares diagonally, vertically or horizontally, rather than only one square at a time. The final adaptation to the original game that I am aware of was that the Bishop was also allowed to move any number of squares on his diagonals, rather than one at a time, as before. Powers of Sovereigns with the ear of the Kings and their Clergy must be accurately depicted, after all.
The first book about Chess was published in 1496 in Spain. It was followed in 1512, with an Italian book, written by Damiano. A Spanish priest, Ruy Lopez de Segura, felt that Damiano's book was inadequate and published his own book in 1561. He was one of the best players of his era until he was defeated by two Italians at a competition that was organized by King Philip II.
As a Chess theorist, Ruy Lopez was replaced by Gioacchino Greco. That man was without equal and his writings were published in English, French and German. In the late seventeenth century, the game of Chess was nurtured and improved in two cafés. Slaughter's Coffee House in London and the Café de la Régence in Paris. Voltaire, Rousseau, Robespierre, Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin all frequented the Café de la Régence. The Chess masters, Philidor, Bourdonnais, Deschapelles and Kermeur also played inside these two historic cafés.
So much coffee was consumed in Chess cafés to the detriment of some people’s health, that French chemists discovered that adding roasted chicory root to the coffee beans yielded the result of having all the benefits of caffeine without the deleterious effects one one’s nerves. That coffee chicory mix is popular yet in Louisiana.
The Italians wrote the best books about Chess theory until the mid-Eighteenth Century. The first International Chess Tournament was in London in 1851. It was organized by Howard Staunton who was defeated by Rudolph Anderssen. In 1858, a man from Louisiana named Paul Morphy went to London. He played multiple opponents simultaneously and blindfolded. He defeated everybody. Paul Morphy was such a skilled opponent that Staunton would not play him, much to Staunton’s discredit as a gentleman and to the embarrassment of the British people. Rudolph Anderssen was also defeated by Morphy. The bayou boy then became the unofficial World Champion.
The Chess Federation was created in France in 1924. The Soviets had the greatest influence on the game of Chess in the Twentieth Century. Boris Spassky was eventually defeated by the American, Bobby Fischer, who then disappeared for twenty years. Fischer reappeared after being lured out of hiding by a letter written by seventeen year old female Hungarian Chess champion, Zita Rajcsanyi and he defeated Spassky again in Yugoslavia in 1992. I encourage you to read the fascinating biography of Bobby Fischer by Frank Brady entitled, Endgame. In the book, you will get answers to many questions that surround his seemingly erratic behaviour.
Fischer refused to play Anatoly Karpov and thus in 1975, Karpov was the World Champion. Karpov himself was afraid of being defeated by Garry Kasparov. Born in Baku, on the Caspian Sea, of an Armenian mother and a Jewish father, Kasparov was only twenty-two years old when he won the World Chess Championship.
Garry defeated Karpov during the Championship of Feb. 1985. It was the longest Chess competition in history. Karpov was mentally and physically drained and he wanted to resume the contest at a later date. Florencio Campomanes, the Filipino President of FIDE (International Chess Federation), intervened on behalf of Karpov. Kasparov protested the decision and created the Professional Chess Association. He then become an Alternate World Champion, after defeating an Englishman.
Later, he played a series of games against Deep Blue, a Chess super-computer. Deep Blue was the first machine to win a Chess Game against a reigning Human World Champion, in this case, Garry Kasparov, under Regular Time Control. The match was held on February 10, 1996. Kasparov won three and drew two of the following five games, defeating Deep Blue by a score of 4 – 2. Wins count 1 point and Draws count ½ point in Chess tournaments. The match concluded on February 17, 1996.
Deep Blue was upgraded and Kasparov played it again in May 1997. Deep Blue won the six-game rematch by 3½ – 2½, concluding on May 11. Deep Blue won the deciding game six and became the first computer system to defeat a reigning Human World Champion in a Match under Standard Chess Tournament Time Controls.
If you are curious about what was inside of the non-human champion, here are some technical specifics. The system derived its playing strength mainly out of brute force computing power. That means the running of an unimaginable series of possible projections and checking their consequences before deciding upon the best choice. It was a massively parallel, RS/6000 SP Thin P2SC based system with 30 nodes. Each node containing a 120 MHz P2SC microprocessor for a total of 30, enhanced with 480 special purpose VLSI Chess Chips.
Its Chess playing program was written in C and ran under the AIX operating system. It was capable of evaluating 200 million positions per second which was twice as fast as the 1996 version. In June 1997, Deep Blue was the 259th most powerful supercomputer according to the TOP 500 list, achieving 11.38 Giga Flops on the High-Performance LINPACK benchmark.*
The Deep Blue Chess computer that defeated Kasparov in 1997 would typically search to a depth of between six and eight moves to a maximum of twenty or even more moves in some situations. It has been estimated that one additional Ply (a half-move) increases the playing strength 50 to 70 ELO points. ELO points are the Accepted Standard of Measurement of Chess Playing Strength, a specific Chess IQ, if you will.
Deep Blue's evaluation function was initially written in a generalized form with many ‘to-be-determined’ parameters. (e.g. how important a safe King position is, compared to a space advantage in the centre.) The optimal values for those parameters were then determined by the system itself, by analyzing thousands of Master games. The evaluation function was split into 8,000 parts, many of them designed for special positions.
In the Opening Book there were over 4,000 positions and 700,000 Grandmaster games. The Endgame database contained many six piece Endgames and five or fewer piece positions. Before the second match, the Chess knowledge of the program was fine tuned by Grandmaster Joel Benjamin. The opening library was provided by Grandmasters Miguel Illescas, John Fedorowicz and Nick de Firmian.
The tournament’s rules allowed the developers to modify the program between games, which they used to shore up weaknesses in the computer's play that were revealed during the course of the match. Kasparov requested printouts of the machine's log files but IBM refused, although the company later published the logs on the Internet, possibly in the original form, possibly not. Kasparov demanded a rematch but IBM refused and then dismantled Deep Blue in an unsporting fashion very reminiscent to me of Staunton’s treatment of Paul Morphy.
Personally, I stand in awe of the human brain and I feel sure that the other 258 supercomputers from 1997 that were cited above as being more powerful than Deep Blue would likely have made DB blush a Deep Red.* Yet, all those machines were conceived, engineered, built and operated by human brains. Today, we are beyond those crudities and headlong into Gene Editing and Quantum Computing.
Some humans seem bent on trying to match and surpass the mental abilities of our own species with soulless machines. Thank you Garry and Bobby, for representing real boys and girls. Let us not forget that Garry can do all his computations powered by a cup of coffee, a pastrami sandwich and a pencil.
-source of excerpt*: https://www.indianetzone.com/78/history_chess_india.htm.
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