History Of Chess
Chess is a recreational and competitive sport played between two
players. Sometimes called Western chess or international chess to
distinguish it from its predecessors and other chess variants, the
current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe during the second
half of the 15th century after evolving from similar, much older games
of Indian and Persian origin. Today, chess is one of the world's most
popular games, played by millions of people worldwide in clubs, online,
by correspondence, in tournaments and informally.
The sport is played on a square chequered chessboard with 64 squares
arranged in an eight-by-eight square. At the start, each player (one
controlling the white pieces, the other controlling the black pieces)
controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights,
two bishops, and eight pawns. The object of the game is to checkmate the
opponent's king, whereby the king is under immediate attack (in "check")
and there is no way to remove it from attack on the next move.
The tradition of organized competitive chess started in the sixteenth
century. The first official World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz,
claimed his title in 1886; Viswanathan Anand is the current World
Champion. Theoreticians have developed extensive chess strategies and
tactics since the game's inception. Aspects of art are found in chess
composition.
One of the goals of early computer scientists was to create a
chess-playing machine, and today's chess is deeply influenced by the
abilities of current chess programs and by the possibility to play
online. In 1996, a match between Garry Kasparov, then World Champion,
and a computer proved for the first time that machines are able to beat
even the strongest human players.