Testing the Legend

The History of Chess

Course 13 · Chapter 10 · Capstone: Testing the Legend

The course has followed one game from northern India to the internet. This last chapter puts the pieces together: a timeline, the claims we set out to test in Chapter 1 weighed against what we found, six questions to check your understanding, and a short method for reading any history of the game. Dates are those given in earlier chapters and keep their "check" status.

Timeline

Date (check each)	Event	Chapter
By about the 6th century	Chaturanga in northern India (sources range from the 5th to the 7th)	2
7th century onward	Chatrang in Persia, then shatranj in the Islamic world	2
By about the 10th century	The game in Spain, Sicily and elsewhere in Europe	3
12th century	The Lewis chessmen carved	3
c. 1475 to 1495	The new queen and bishop recorded in Valencia; Vicent's book in 1495	4
1561	Ruy López's book printed	5
1749	Philidor's Analyse	5
1851	London tournament; Anderssen wins	6
1886	Steinitz becomes the first official world champion	7
1948	FIDE takes control of the title	7
1972	Fischer beats Spassky in Reykjavik	8
1997	Deep Blue beats Kasparov	9
2017	AlphaZero reported to beat a leading engine	9

Myths Tested

Claim from Chapter 1 (check each)	What we found
Chess is 4,000 years old.	Not supported. The earliest evidence that is clearly chess is of the 6th century or so, in India (Chapter 2).
A king rewarded the inventor with grains doubled on every square.	A legend about exponential growth. The arithmetic is exact, 2⁶⁴ − 1 grains, but no source shows it as history (Chapter 2).
The queen has always been the strongest piece.	False. She was a weak counsellor until the later fifteenth century (Chapter 4).
The Turk was a thinking machine.	False. A human operator was hidden inside (Chapter 9).
Chess players are all geniuses.	Not tested by this course. The question is about ability, memory and practice, and needs studies of players, not histories of the game; treat the claim with caution.

Other legends met on the way Isabella of Castile as the cause of the strong queen (Chapter 4), the Ruy Lopez as Ruy López's own invention (Chapter 5), Anderssen as a "world champion" in 1851 (Chapter 6), and "Fischer beat the whole Soviet system" (Chapter 8) all fail the same test: a neat story is attached to a more complicated record.

A Method in Code

The method used throughout can be put as three questions to ask of any claim: how early is the source, is it story or record, and does anything independent agree? The script below turns that into a crude checklist. It is a thinking aid, not a measurement. It was run to produce the output shown.

def rate(early, record, independent):
    score = sum([early, record, independent])
    return ["weak", "thin", "fair", "strong"][score]

claims = {
    "Karnamak: Ardashir played chess": (False, False, False),
    "Lewis chessmen are 12th century": (True, True, True),
    "Wheat on the squares": (False, False, False),
    "Deep Blue won in 1997": (True, True, True),
}

for claim, flags in claims.items():
    print(f"{claim:36} {rate(*flags)}")

The two strong claims are supported by objects or records and several independent sources; the two weak ones are legends with no early or independent support. The flags themselves are judgements, so two readers may set them differently, and the checklist only makes the reasoning visible (check).

Six Review Questions

What are the three names of the game on its journey from India to Europe, and which language does each come from?
Why do the Lewis chessmen tell us about the appearance of the game but not its rules?
List three changes to the rules in the later fifteenth century and say why the queen's change mattered most.
What did London 1851 establish, and what did it leave unsettled?
What changed in 1948, and what changed in 1993?
What does the Turk have in common with the story that Fischer beat the Soviet system?

Reading Chess History

Date the source, not just the event. A legend written six centuries later is evidence for the legend, not the event.
Separate objects, rules and stories. Objects show what pieces looked like; texts show rules; stories show what people wanted to believe.
Look for the person in the title. Names on openings, pieces and championships often record who wrote, promoted or won, not who first did it.
Ask who controls the institution. Titles, ratings and tournaments are made by people with interests.
Check the sums. Many claims about scores, grains and rating changes can be tested with arithmetic.

A British comparison Britain appears at nearly every stage of the later story: the Lewis chessmen in London and Edinburgh, the Staunton pattern and the 1851 tournament in London, Short's challenge in 1993 and Turing's early thinking about machine play. A good way to finish is to see the Lewis chessmen in the National Museum of Scotland or the British Museum (check what is on display) and ask the questions of this chapter of what is in front of you.

Not Yet Verified This chapter summarises the earlier ones, so it carries their limits: the broad outline, the Lewis find, the 1495 and 1561 books, London 1851, the 1972 and 1997 results and the AlphaZero report were checked by web search at the time of writing, while many dates and attributions were not and are flagged "(check)". The claim about the abilities of chess players was not examined at all. Treat every "(check)" accordingly.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Choose any three events from the timeline and write a short paragraph linking them as one story.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Add two claims of your own to the checklist script, rate them, and say whether you agree with the output.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Answer the six review questions in a sentence or two each.

→ Solution

Course complete You have finished The History of Chess: the game's origins in India and Persia, its journey to Europe, the rule changes of the later fifteenth century, the masters and their theories, clubs and tournaments, the world championship, the Cold War contest, the machines, and a method for testing the legends. Related courses include The History of Football and The History of Timekeeping.