Origin of Chess
The precursors of chess originated in India during the Gupta Empire, where its early form in the 6th century was known as chaturaṅga, which translates as "four divisions (of the military)": infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and chariotry, represented by the pieces that would evolve into the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook, respectively.
Chess was introduced to Persia from India and became a part of the princely or courtly education of Persian nobility. In Sassanid Persia around 600 the name became chatrang, which subsequently evolved to shatranj, and the rules were developed further. Players started calling "Shāh!" (Persian for "King!") when attacking the opponent's king, and "Shāh Māt!" (Persian for "the king is helpless") when the king was attacked and could not escape from attack. These exclamations persisted in chess as it traveled to other lands.
The game was taken up by the Muslim world after the Islamic conquest of Persia, with the pieces largely keeping their Persian names. The Moors of North Africa rendered Persian "shatranj" as shaṭerej, which gave rise to the Spanish acedrex, axedrez and ajedrez; in Portuguese it became xadrez, and in Greek zatrikion, but in the rest of Europe it was replaced by versions of the Persian shāh ("king"). Thus, the game came to be called ludus scacchorum or scacc(h)i in Latin, scacchi in Italian, escacs in Catalan, échecs in French (Old French eschecs); schaken in Dutch, Schach in German, szachy in Polish, šahs in Latvian, skak inDanish, sjakk in Norwegian, schack in Swedish, šakki in Finnish, šah in South Slavic languages, sakk in Hungarian and şah in Romanian; there are two theories about why this change happened:
From the exclamation "check" or "checkmate" as it was pronounced in various languages.
From the first chessmen known of in Western Europe (except Iberia and Greece) being ornamental chess kings brought in as curios by Muslim traders.
The Mongols call the game shatar, and in Ethiopia it is called senterej, both evidently derived from shatranj.
Chess spread directly from the Middle East to Russia, where chess became known as шахматы (shakhmaty, treated as a plural).
The game reached Western Europe and Russia by at least three routes, the earliest being in the 9th century. By the year 1000 it had spread throughout Europe. Introduced into the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors in the 10th century, it was described in a famous 13th century manuscript covering shatranj, backgammonand dice named the Libro de los juegos.
Chess spread throughout the world and many variants of the game soon began taking shape. Buddhist pilgrims, Silk Road traders and others carried it to the Far East where it was transformed and assimilated into a game often played on the intersection of the lines of the board rather than within the squares.Chaturanga reached Europe through Persia, the Byzantine empire and the expanding Arabian empire. Muslims carried chess to North Africa, Sicily, and Iberia by the 10th century.
The game was developed extensively in Europe, and by the late 15th century, it had survived a series of prohibitions and Christian Church sanctions to almost take the shape of the modern game. Modern history saw reliable reference works, competitive chess tournaments and exciting new variants which added to the game's popularity, further bolstered by reliable timing mechanisms (first introduced in 1861), effective rules and charismatic players.
Reference: www.chess.com
Brief History of World Champions
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| Wilhem Steinitz |
The list of official World Chess Champions starts with Wilhelm Steinitz (1836 - 1900), a Czech-Austrian chess grand master, world chess champion 1872-1894. He won this title in 1866 when he beat Adolf Anderssen in London.
He defended his title in several big matches, in 1886 against Zukertort, in 1989 against Chigorin, in 1890 against Gunsberg and in 1892 against Chigorin again.In 1894 Steinitz lost to Emanuel Lasker.
Steinitz was founder of positional play. He postulated several basic rules and It was him who taught that the site which has got some advantage must continue attack otherwise the advantage will disappear.
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| Emanuel Lasker |
German chess player (1868 – 1941), exceptional theoretician, mathematician, and publicist. He had kept the crown of the world best chess player for long 27 years and successfully defended his title against Frank Marshall (1900), Carl Slechter (1907), Siegbert Tarrasch (1908) and Dawid Markelowicz Janowski (1909).
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| José Raúl Capablanca |
(1888 – 1942) was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. One of the greatest players of all time, he was renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play.
In January 1920, Emanuel Lasker and Capablanca signed an agreement to play a World Championship match in 1921, noting that Capablanca was not free to play in 1920. Because of the delay, Lasker insisted that if he resigned the title, then Capablanca should become World Champion. The match was played in March–April 1921; Lasker resigned it after just fourteen games, having lost four games and won none. Reuben Fine andHarry Golombek attributed the one-sided result to Lasker's being in mysteriously poor form. Fred Reinfeld mentioned speculations that Havana's humid climate weakened Lasker and that he was depressed about the outcome of World War I, especially as he had lost his life savings.
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| Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine |
(1892 – 1946) is a legendary Russian chess player and theoretician renown for his famous ending skill, positional style as well as his famous long-calculated combinations. He is considered to be one of the greatest chess players in the history of the games as well as one of the founders of so called "Soviet School of Chess" which became to dominate the world of chess after World War II.
He beat Capablanca in their famous match in 1927 in Buenos Aires. In this match Queens Gambit Declined was scrutinised and it was played in 33 out of 34 games! Capablanca employed 1.e4 in the first game and he lost and since time onwards he had never played 1.e4 till the end of this match.
Alekhine offered Capablanca a rematch on the same demanding terms that Capablanca had set for him, and negotiations dragged on for years without making much progress. Meanwhile, Alekhine defended his title with ease against Bogoljubov in 1929 and 1934. He was defeated by Euwe in 1935, but regained his crown in the 1937 rematch. His tournament record, however, remained uneven, and rising young stars like Keres, Fine, and Botvinnik threatened his title. Negotiations for a title match with Keres or Botvinnik were halted by the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939. Negotiations with Botvinnik for a world title match were proceeding in 1946 when Alekhine died in Portugal, in unclear circumstances.
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| Machgielis (Max) Euwe |
(1901 – 1981) was a Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, and author. He was the fifth player to become World Chess Champion (1935–37). Euwe also served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978.
On December 15, 1935 after 30 games played in 13 different cities around The Netherlands over a period of 80 days, Euwe defeated Alekhine by 15½:14½, becoming the fifth World Chess Champion. Alekhine quickly went two games ahead, but from game 13 onwards Euwe won twice as many games as Alekhine. Euwe lost the title to Alekhine in a rematch in 1937, also played in The Netherlands, by the lopsided margin of 15½:9½. Alekhine had given up alcohol to prepare for the rematch, although he would start drinking again later. Alekhine got back to the sort of form he had shown from 1927–35, when he dominated chess. The match was a real contest initially, but Euwe's play collapsed near the end and he lost four of the last five games. Fine, who was Euwe's second in this match, attributed the collapse to nervous tension, possibly aggravated by Euwe's attempts to maintain a calm appearance.
The two world title matches against Alekhine represent the heart of Euwe's career. Altogether, the two played 86 competitive games, and Alekhine had a +28 −20 =38 lead, according to chessgames.com. Many of Alekhine's wins came early in their series; he was nine years older, and had more experience during that time. Then in the return match, Alekhine won by six points. So, during the period 1925–35, the two were very closely matched.
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| Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik |
(1911 – 1995) was a Soviet and Russian International Grandmaster and three-time World Chess Champion. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few famous chess players who achieved distinction in another career while playing top-class competitive chess. He also developed a chess-playing algorithm that tried to "think" like a top human player, but this approach has been superseded by a brute-force search strategy that exploits the rapid increase in the calculation speed of modern computers.
Botvinnik was one of five players to contest the 1948 World Chess Championship, which was held at The Hague and Moscow. He won the 1948 tournament convincingly, with a score of 14/20, three points clear, becoming the sixth World Champion.
Botvinnik then held the title, with two brief interruptions, for the next fifteen years, during which he played seven world championship matches. In 1951, he drew with David Bronstein over 24 games in Moscow, +5 −5 =14, keeping the world title, but it was a struggle for Botvinnik, who won the second-last game and drew the last in order to tie the match. In 1954, he drew with Vasily Smyslov over 24 games at Moscow, +7 −7 =10, again retaining the title. In 1957, he lost to Smyslov by 9½:12½ in Moscow, but the rules then in force allowed him a rematch without having to go through the Candidates' Tournament, and in 1958 he won the rematch in Moscow; Smyslov said his health was poor during the return match. In 1960, Botvinnik was convincingly beaten 8½:12½ at Moscow by Tal, now 23 years old, but again exercised his right to a rematch in 1961, and won by 13:8 in Moscow. Commentators agreed that Tal's play was weaker in the rematch, probably due to his health, but also that Botvinnik's play was better than in the 1960 match, largely due to thorough preparation. Botvinnik changed his style in the rematch, avoiding the tactical complications in which Tal excelled and aiming for closed positions and endgames, where Tal's technique was not outstanding. Finally, in 1963, he lost the title to Tigran Petrosian, by 9½:12½ in Moscow.
FIDE had by then altered the rules, and he was not allowed a rematch. The rematch rule had been nicknamed the "Botvinnik rule", because he twice benefited from it.
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| Vasily Vasilievich Smyslov |
(1921 – 2010) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster, and was World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958. He was a Candidate for the World Chess Championship on eight occasions (1948, 1950, 1953, 1956, 1959, 1965, 1983, and 1985).
Smyslov was twice equal first at the Soviet Championship (1949, 1955), and his total of 17 Chess Olympiad medals won is an all-time record. In five European Team Championships, Smyslov won ten gold medals. Smyslov remained active and successful in competitive chess well into the 1960s and 1970s, qualifying for the finals of the World Championship Candidates' Matches as late as 1983. Despite failing eyesight, he remained active in the occasional composition of chess problems and studies until shortly before his death in 2010.
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| Michail Nechemievich Tal |
(1936 – 1992) was a Soviet–Latvian chess player, a Grandmaster, and the eighth World Chess Champion. Widely regarded as a creative genius, and the best attacking player of all time, he played a daring, combinatorial style.
Tal won a very strong tournament at Zürich, 1959. Following the Interzonal, the top players carried on to the Candidates' Tournament, Yugoslavia 1959. Tal showed superior form by winning with 20/28 points, ahead of Paul Keres with 18½, followed by Tigran Petrosian,Vasily Smyslov, Bobby Fischer, Svetozar Gligorić, Friðrik Ólafsson, and Pal Benko. Tal's victory was attributed to his dominance over the lower half of the field; whilst scoring only one win and three losses versus Keres, he won all four individual games against Fischer, and took 3½ points out of 4 from each of Gligorić, Olafsson, and Benko.
In 1960, at the age of 23, Tal thoroughly defeated the relatively staid and strategic Mikhail Botvinnik in a World Championship match, held in Moscow, by 12½:8½ (six wins, two losses, and thirteen draws), making him the youngest-ever world champion (a record later broken by Garry Kasparov, who earned the title at 22). Botvinnik, who had never faced Tal before the title match began, won the return match against Tal in 1961, also held in Moscow, by 13:8 (ten wins to five, with six draws). In the period between the matches Botvinnik had thoroughly analyzed Tal's style, and turned most of the return match's games into slow wars of manoeuver or endgames, rather than the complicated tactical melees which were Tal's happy hunting ground. Tal's chronic kidney problems contributed to his defeat, and his doctors in Riga advised that he should postpone the match for health reasons. Yuri Averbakh claimed that Botvinnik would agree to a postponement only if Tal was certified unfit by Moscow doctors, and that Tal then decided to play. His short reign atop the chess world made him one of the two so-called "winter kings" who interrupted Botvinnik's long reign from 1948 to 1963 (the other was Smyslov, world champion 1957–1958).
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| Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian |
(1929 – 1984) was a Soviet-Armenian grandmaster, and World Chess Champion from 1963 to 1969. He was nicknamed "Iron Tigran" due to his playing style because of his almost impenetrable defence, which emphasised safety above all else. He was a Candidate for the World Championship on eight occasions (1953, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1971, 1974, 1977 and 1980). He won the world championship in 1963 (against Botvinnik), successfully defended it in 1966 (against Spassky), and lost it in 1969 (to Spassky). Thus he was the defending World Champion or a World Championship candidate in ten consecutive three-year cycles. He won the Soviet Championship four times (1959, 1961, 1969, and 1975). He was recognised as the hardest player to beat in the history of chess by the authors of a 2004 book.
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| Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian |
(born in 1937) is a Soviet-French chess grandmaster. He was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from late 1969 to 1972. He is known as one of the greatest and oldest living chess players. Spassky won the Soviet Chess Championship twice outright (1961, 1973), and twice more lost in play-offs (1956, 1963), after tying for first during the event proper. He was a World Chess Championship candidate on seven occasions (1956, 1965, 1968, 1974, 1977, 1980, and 1985).
Spassky defeated Tigran Petrosian in 1969 to become World Champion, then lost the title in the Fischer–Spassky match in 1972, one of the most famous chess matches in history.
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| Robert James Fischer |
(March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author. After ending his competitive career, he proposed a new variant of chess and a modified chess timing system: His idea of adding a time increment after each move is now standard, and his variant Chess960 is gaining in popularity.
He beat Boris Vasilievich Spassky in their famous match in Reykjavik 1972.
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| Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov |
born May 23, 1951 is a Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion. He was the official world champion from 1975 to 1985 when he was defeated by Garry Kasparov. He played three matches against Kasparov for the title from 1986 to 1990, before becoming FIDE World Champion once again after Kasparov broke away from FIDE in 1993. He held the title until 1999, when he resigned his title in protest against FIDE's new world championship rules. For his decades-long standing among the world's elite, Karpov is considered one of the greatest players of all time. His tournament successes include over 160 first-place finishes.He had a peak ELO rating of 2780, and his 90 total months at world number one is second all-time behind only Garry Kasparov since the inception of the FIDE ranking list in 1971.Since 2005, he has been a member of the Public Chamber of Russia. He has recently involved himself in several humanitarian causes, such as advocating the use of iodised salt.
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| Garry Kimovich Kasparov |
born Garry Kimovich Weinstein, 13 April 1963, Baku, Azerbaijan) is a Russian (formerly Soviet) chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time.[1] Kasparov became the youngest ever undisputed World Chess Champion in 1985 at the age of 22. He held the official FIDE world title until 1993, when a dispute with FIDE led him to set up a rival organization, the Professional Chess Association. He continued to hold the "Classical" World Chess Championship until his defeat by Vladimir Kramnik in 2000. He is also widely known for being the first world chess champion to lose a match to a computer under standard time controls, when he lost to Deep Blue in 1997.
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| Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik |
born 25 June 1975 is a Russian chess grandmaster. He was the Classical World Chess Champion from 2000 to 2006, and the undisputed World Chess Champion from 2006 to 2007. He has also won the two strongest tournaments (by rating strength) in chess history: the 2009 Mikhail Tal Memorial and the 2010 Grand Slam Masters Final. In October 2000, he defeated Garry Kasparov in a match played in London, and became the Classical World Chess Champion. In late 2004, Kramnik successfully defended his title against challenger Péter Lékó in a drawn match played in Brissago, Switzerland.
In October 2006, Kramnik, the Classical World Champion, defeated reigning FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov in a unification match, the World Chess Championship 2006. As a result Kramnik became the first undisputed World Champion, holding both the FIDE and Classical titles, since Kasparov split from FIDE in 1993.
In 2007, Kramnik lost the title to Viswanathan Anand, who won the World Chess Championship tournament ahead of Kramnik. He challenged Anand at the World Chess Championship 2008 to regain his title, but lost.
Kramnik qualified for the Candidates Tournament which determined the challenger to face World Champion Anand in the World Chess Championship 2012. He advanced to the semifinals before losing to Alexander Grischuk.
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| Viswanathan Anand |
born 11 December 1969 is an Indian chess Grandmaster, the current World Chess Champion, and currently second highest rated player in the world. He held the FIDE World Chess Championship from 2000 to 2002, at a time when the world title was split. He became the undisputed World Champion in 2007 and defended his title against Vladimir Kramnik in 2008. He then successfully defended his title in the World Chess Championship 2010 against Veselin Topalov. As the reigning champion, he will face Boris Gelfand, the winner of the Candidates Tournament, for the World Chess Championship 2012.
Anand is one of six players in history to break the 2800 mark on the FIDE rating list, and in April 2007 at the age of 37, he became the world number one for the first time. He was at the top of the world rankings five out of six times, from April 2007 to July 2008, holding the number-one ranking for a total of 15 months. In October 2008, he dropped out of the world top three ranking for the first time since July 1996. Anand regained the world number one ranking in November 1, 2010, having defeated the reigning world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen in the Bilbao Masters, but had to concede the top spot back to Carlsen in July 2011.
Anand became India's first grandmaster in 1987.[1] He was also the first recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1991–92, India's highest sporting honor. In 2007, he was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, making him the first sports person to receive the award in Indian history.
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