A 1,500-year story
Chess has travelled from the courts of ancient India to phones in every pocket. Here are the milestones that shaped the game on your board today.
c. 600 CE
Chess begins in northern India as chaturanga, a war game with four divisions: infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots — the ancestors of the pawn, knight, bishop, and rook. It is played on an 8×8 board called the ashtāpada.
The four divisions of the army become the pieces we still use today.
c. 700–800 CE
Persian players adapt the game and rename it shatranj. After the Arab conquest of Persia, shatranj travels along trade routes through the Middle East and North Africa. The first known chess problems and the earliest named players appear in this era.
‘Shāh māt’ — the king is helpless — gives us the word checkmate.
c. 1000–1475
Moors bring chess into Spain and Sicily, and from there it spreads across Christian Europe. It becomes a noble pastime, taught alongside riding and swordsmanship. Pieces are slowly renamed — the vizier becomes the queen, the elephant becomes the bishop.
By 1300, chess is one of the ‘seven knightly virtues’ of European nobility.
1475
In Valencia, Spain, the queen and bishop receive their modern long-range powers. The new game — sometimes called scacchi alla rabiosa, ‘chess of the mad queen’ — is dramatically faster and more tactical. This is the version we still play today.
Modern chess is barely 550 years old — younger than most cathedrals.
1886
Wilhelm Steinitz defeats Johannes Zukertort to become the first official World Chess Champion. Steinitz also pioneers ‘positional’ chess — the idea that small structural advantages matter as much as flashy attacks.
Steinitz held the title for eight years and changed how chess is taught.
1972 & 1985
Bobby Fischer’s 1972 victory over Boris Spassky in Reykjavík makes chess front-page news during the Cold War. A decade later, Garry Kasparov begins a 20-year reign that redefines preparation, opening theory, and competitive intensity.
The 1972 ‘Match of the Century’ was watched by millions worldwide.
1997 — today
In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeats Kasparov in a match — the first time a reigning world champion loses to a machine. Today, neural-network engines like AlphaZero and Stockfish play far above any human, while online platforms and streamers have brought tens of millions of new players to the game.
More games of chess are played each day online than in all of the 20th century combined.
Try a lesson, solve a tactic, or play a game against the computer.