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Authors: David Shenk
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all across the Continent. The so-called
Lombard assize
allowed the King an extended leap over other pieces, as well as permitted the King and Queen to move together for their first move. England had two separate sets of rules for a short game and long game. In Germany, four of the eight Pawns were allowed the double-square initial move. Iceland accelerated changes in the endgame and placed enormous emphasis on the
higher
and
lower
forms of checkmate. “It took time for a happy improvement discovered perhaps in Spain to reach Germany, England or Iceland,” writes Murray, “and all the modifications did not commend themselves to players in other countries.”
Eventually, the game would take on a pan-European character. But for the first few centuries, citizens of the Middle Ages seemed to be more enamored of the game’s social carriage than its intellectual ferocity. A review of problem sets and games from these early centuries in Europe shows that competition was not fierce. There were no grandmasters, no provocative analysis, no organized competitions. “The general standard of play,” says Richard Eales, “was not high.” The fragmented, struggling Europe needed the game’s iconography, its metaphoric power, and its infectious playfulness—but not its grueling rigor. Real life was wearing and grueling enough.
In this transitional period, chess in some areas took on a very strange temporary association with, of all things, dice. While dice was being starkly contrasted with chess in sermons, it was also mingling with chess play in some European play as a new rescue from what many considered the game’s unbearable sluggishness. “The wearingness which players experienced from the long duration of the game when played right through [is the reason] dice have been brought into chess, so that it can be played more quickly,” a player from the Castile region of Spain explained in 1283.
Even with the many assizes, this was still essentially the same game as
shatranj
, with the Pawns’ initial two-square move not yet universally accepted, and the Bishop and Queen severely constrained. The weak pieces made it a much slower game than modern chess.
The slow pace had suited Muslims just fine, but from a European point of view, says Harold Murray, “the game was long in coming to a point, and the tactics of the prolonged opening play were by no means easy to discover.” To speed up the game, alternative versions had emerged wherein one die would be thrown before each move to determine which piece would be played:
If it landed on “1,” the player would move a Pawn.
If on “2,” a Knight.
If on “3,” a Bishop.
If on “4,” a Rook.
If on “5,” the Queen.
If on “6,” the King.
From the standpoint of the moralists who saw chess and dice as opposites, this was a perplexing development: fate had been invited into humanity’s great symbolic arena of skill and free will. Essentially, it pitted chess in a cultural battle against itself. Dice, declared Murray, “ruins the real entity of chess.”
Like Europe itself, the game was crying out for consolidation.
THE IMMORTAL GAME
Move 3
S ITUATED ON L ONDON’S ANCIENT aristocratic boulevard known as The Strand, Simpson’s Grand Divan was a distinguished center of drinking, dining, and leisure in the mid-nineteenth century. Men with some time to spare would gather here to smoke cigars, read the newspaper, talk politics, and play chess. For one shilling and sixpence (equivalent to nine U.S. dollars today), a patron would be furnished with coffee, a cigar, and unlimited access to a chess table. Howard Staunton, the great English champion who helped popularize the game and was organizing the 1851 international tournament, had actually learned how to play chess in the Divan years earlier. So it was a very natural place for two would-be competitors, Anderssen and Kieseritzky, to meet for practice play on one of their days off from formal competition.
Move 3
Lombard assize
allowed the King an extended leap over other pieces, as well as permitted the King and Queen to move together for their first move. England had two separate sets of rules for a short game and long game. In Germany, four of the eight Pawns were allowed the double-square initial move. Iceland accelerated changes in the endgame and placed enormous emphasis on the
higher
and
lower
forms of checkmate. “It took time for a happy improvement discovered perhaps in Spain to reach Germany, England or Iceland,” writes Murray, “and all the modifications did not commend themselves to players in other countries.”
Eventually, the game would take on a pan-European character. But for the first few centuries, citizens of the Middle Ages seemed to be more enamored of the game’s social carriage than its intellectual ferocity. A review of problem sets and games from these early centuries in Europe shows that competition was not fierce. There were no grandmasters, no provocative analysis, no organized competitions. “The general standard of play,” says Richard Eales, “was not high.” The fragmented, struggling Europe needed the game’s iconography, its metaphoric power, and its infectious playfulness—but not its grueling rigor. Real life was wearing and grueling enough.
In this transitional period, chess in some areas took on a very strange temporary association with, of all things, dice. While dice was being starkly contrasted with chess in sermons, it was also mingling with chess play in some European play as a new rescue from what many considered the game’s unbearable sluggishness. “The wearingness which players experienced from the long duration of the game when played right through [is the reason] dice have been brought into chess, so that it can be played more quickly,” a player from the Castile region of Spain explained in 1283.
Even with the many assizes, this was still essentially the same game as
shatranj
, with the Pawns’ initial two-square move not yet universally accepted, and the Bishop and Queen severely constrained. The weak pieces made it a much slower game than modern chess.
The slow pace had suited Muslims just fine, but from a European point of view, says Harold Murray, “the game was long in coming to a point, and the tactics of the prolonged opening play were by no means easy to discover.” To speed up the game, alternative versions had emerged wherein one die would be thrown before each move to determine which piece would be played:
If it landed on “1,” the player would move a Pawn.
If on “2,” a Knight.
If on “3,” a Bishop.
If on “4,” a Rook.
If on “5,” the Queen.
If on “6,” the King.
From the standpoint of the moralists who saw chess and dice as opposites, this was a perplexing development: fate had been invited into humanity’s great symbolic arena of skill and free will. Essentially, it pitted chess in a cultural battle against itself. Dice, declared Murray, “ruins the real entity of chess.”
Like Europe itself, the game was crying out for consolidation.
THE IMMORTAL GAME
Move 3
S ITUATED ON L ONDON’S ANCIENT aristocratic boulevard known as The Strand, Simpson’s Grand Divan was a distinguished center of drinking, dining, and leisure in the mid-nineteenth century. Men with some time to spare would gather here to smoke cigars, read the newspaper, talk politics, and play chess. For one shilling and sixpence (equivalent to nine U.S. dollars today), a patron would be furnished with coffee, a cigar, and unlimited access to a chess table. Howard Staunton, the great English champion who helped popularize the game and was organizing the 1851 international tournament, had actually learned how to play chess in the Divan years earlier. So it was a very natural place for two would-be competitors, Anderssen and Kieseritzky, to meet for practice play on one of their days off from formal competition.
Move 3
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