The history of chess

A game invented in ancient India, refined across three continents, and now played by hundreds of millions of people online every day.

Origins: chaturanga in India (~6th century)

The earliest form of chess we have solid evidence for is chaturanga, played in the Gupta Empire of northern India around the 6th century CE. The name means "four divisions" - a reference to the four branches of the Indian military: infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots. These four units became the ancestors of the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook.

Chaturanga was played on an 8x8 grid called an ashtapada, which was also used for other board games. The object, even then, was to capture the opposing king. The game spread quickly along trade routes, and within a century or two had reached Persia.

Persia and the Islamic world: shatranj (~600-1000 CE)

In Sassanid Persia the game became chatrang and then shatranj. Persian texts from the 6th and 7th centuries describe it in detail, including the concept of announcing check - saying "shāh!" (king) when the king was attacked, which is the direct origin of the word "chess" and "check." "Checkmate" comes from the Persian shāh māt, meaning "the king is dead."

After the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century, chess spread rapidly across the Arab world and became enormously popular. Arab scholars wrote the first serious chess manuals and developed early opening theory. The game arrived in Europe through multiple routes - Spain via the Moors, Sicily via Arab merchants, and eastern Europe via trade with the Byzantine Empire - all roughly between 900 and 1100 CE.

Europe and the modern rules (~1475)

Medieval European chess was slower and more limited than the modern game. The queen - known as the ferz (counselor) in Arabic chess - could only move one square diagonally. The bishop (originally the elephant) was similarly weak. The game could drag on for hundreds of moves.

Around 1475, probably originating in Spain or Italy, two rule changes transformed everything. The queen became the most powerful piece on the board, able to move any number of squares in any direction. The bishop gained its current long-diagonal range. Pawns were also allowed to advance two squares on their first move, and the en passant rule was added to balance this. Castling, as we know it today, was formalized around the same period.

These changes made chess dramatically faster and more tactical. The game we play today is essentially this 15th-century version, which is why the opening principles - control the center, develop your pieces, castle early - have been stable for over five hundred years.

The first world champions (1886 onward)

Chess culture in the 18th and 19th centuries was built around coffeehouses and match play. The Cafe de la Regence in Paris and Simpson's Divan in London were famous gathering spots. Strong players toured Europe playing exhibition matches for prize money.

The first official World Chess Championship was held in 1886. Wilhelm Steinitz of Austria-Hungary defeated Johannes Zukertort in a match played across several American cities, winning 10 games to 5. Steinitz is recognized as the first World Champion and is also credited with founding modern positional chess theory - the idea that strong play is built on accumulated small advantages, not just direct attacks.

The world championship has run, with some gaps during the World Wars, ever since. Notable champions include José Raúl Capablanca (Cuba), Alexander Alekhine (France), Mikhail Botvinnik (USSR), Bobby Fischer (USA) - who defeated Boris Spassky in the famous 1972 "Match of the Century" during the Cold War - and Garry Kasparov, who dominated the game from 1985 into the 2000s. The current world champion is Ding Liren of China, who won the title in 2023.

Computers enter the game: Deep Blue (1997)

Computers had been playing chess since the 1950s, but machine strength grew slowly for decades. The watershed moment came in May 1997, when IBM's Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov - the reigning world champion and widely considered the greatest player in history at the time - in a six-game match by 3.5 to 2.5. It was the first time a computer had beaten a world champion in a match played under standard time controls.

The match sparked enormous public debate about artificial intelligence and the nature of intelligence itself. For chess players it was a turning point: within a few years it became clear that computers would always outplay the best humans. Rather than ending interest in chess, this shifted how the game was used - engines became coaching tools, game analysis became accessible to everyone, and opening theory expanded dramatically.

Today engines like Stockfish and Leela Chess Zero are far beyond any human player. When you use Chess2EZ to analyze your games, it is Stockfish running the analysis - the same engine technology that descended from those first computer chess experiments in the 1990s. Read how to analyze your own chess games to see how to make the most of that power.

Online chess today

Online chess took off in the late 1990s with platforms like the Internet Chess Club (ICC), but the real explosion came with chess.com (launched 2007) and Lichess (launched 2010, fully free and open-source). By the early 2020s, chess.com reported over 100 million registered members.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 brought a surge of new players to the game globally. The Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit" (released October 2020) introduced chess to a new generation. Streaming platforms made high-level chess commentary accessible to millions of casual viewers. The game that started in 6th-century India is now played by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, on devices that fit in a pocket, for free.

If you are one of those new players, welcome to 1,500 years of history. A good place to start is understanding what a good beginner chess rating looks like - and what to expect as you improve.