All about...#34 - Chess

 MrBLOGGER and Hfjhjoiijklij2

The Pawn is the most common, but the least valuable piece in the game. They take up all of the front rows for the side. There are 8 of them for each side. These are its actions:

- 2 spaces forward when on starting square

- 1 space forward after that

- 1 space diagonal when attacking

The Rook is a very powerful piece with many actions. There are 2 on the back corners of each side. These are its actions:

- Any amount of spaces forward and backward

- Any amount of spaces left and right

The Knight is a decent piece in the game, located to the left on the rook on both sides (2 total). The interesting thing is that it is the only piece that can jump over others.These are its actions:

- Moving in an "L" shape in any direction. L shape is 1 square, then turning to 2 squares

The Bishop is a powerful and crafty piece because it often makes big moves across the board. They are to the left of the Knight, and to the right of the King. They have a big job. These are its actions:

- Any direction diagonal

The King, although important is not actually that powerful, mobile-wise. If you attack and capture the king, the game ends. The king is very vital. These are its actions:

- 1 space forward and backward

- 1 space diagonal

- 1 space to the left and right

The Queen is the most powerful piece in the game. There is only 1 of them for each side. The Queen is so important, that losing it will make it almost impossible to win the game. Players use the Queen to protect the king. These are its actions:

- Any amount of spaces forward and backward

- Any amount of spaces left and right

- Any amount of spaces diagonal.

it got its current name in terminology. With chess from “shah” meaning king, and checkmate from “shah mat” or “the king is helpless.” But then after Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century, chess was introduced to the Arab world. Trade along the Silk Road introduced the game to East Asia, where many variants of chess developed. In China, pieces were placed on intersections of board squares, instead of inside them, as in the native strategy game Go. Mongol leader Tamerlane saw an 11x10 board with safe squares called citadels, and in Japanese shogi, captured pieces could be used by the other player. But it was in Europe where chess started to take its modern form. But the church was suspicious of games, moralists cautioned against spending to much time on them, with chess even briefly being banned in France. Yet the game proliferated, and in the 15th century it started covering into the chess we know today. The relatively weak piece of advisor was recasted as the much more powerful queen. This accelerated the game’s pace, and when other rules were popularized, treatises analyzing common openings and endgames appeared, chess theory was born. With the enlightment era, chess was now seen as an expression of creativity. This “romantic” style reached its peak in the Immortal Game of 1851. When Adolf Anderssen got a checkmate after sacrificing his queen and both rooks. Then in the late 19th century, with the emergence of formal competitive play, made strategic calculation trump dramatic flair. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union devoted great resources on cultivating chess talent. Dominating the championships for the rest of the century. But the player who would upset Russian dominance wasn’t a person from another country, but instead a computer called Deep Blue. Chess playing computers have been developed for decades, but Deep Blue defeat in Garry Kasparov in 1997 was the first time a computer defeated a champion. Today chess software is capable of defeating the best human players.