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History
Ancient precursors and related games
The origin of chess remains a matter of controversy. There is no credible evidence that
chess existed in a form approaching the modern game before the 6th century CE. Game
pieces found in Russia, China, India, Central Asia, Pakistan, and elsewhere that have been
determined to be older than that are now regarded as coming from earlier distantly related
board games, often involving dice and sometimes using playing boards of 100 or more
squares.

One of those earlier games was a war game called chaturanga, a Sanskrit name for a battle
formation mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata. Chaturanga was flourishing in
northwestern India by the 7th century and is regarded as the earliest precursor of modern
chess because it had two key features found in all later chess variants—different pieces had
different powers (unlike checkers and go), and victory was based on one piece, the king of
modern chess.

How chaturanga evolved is unclear. Some historians say chaturanga, perhaps played with
dice on a 64-square board, gradually transformed into shatranj (or chatrang), a two-player
game popular in northern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and southern parts of Central Asia
after 600 CE. Shatranj resembled chaturanga but added a new piece, a firzān (counselor),
which had nothing to do with any troop formation. A game of shatranj could be won either
by eliminating all an opponent’s pieces (baring the king) or by ensuring the capture of the
king. The initial positions of the pawns and knights have not changed, but there were
considerable regional and temporal variations for the other pieces.

The game spread to the east, north, and west, taking on sharply different characteristics. In
the East, carried by Buddhist pilgrims, Silk Road traders, and others, it was transformed
into a game with inscribed disks that were often placed on the intersection of the lines of
the board rather than within the squares. About 750 CE chess reached China, and by the
11th century it had come to Japan and Korea. Chinese chess, the most popular version of
the Eastern game, has 9 files and 10 ranks as well as a boundary—the river, between the 5th
and 6th ranks—that limits access to the enemy camp and makes the game slower than its
Western cousin.

Introduction to Europe
A form of chaturanga or shatranj made its way to Europe by way of Persia, the Byzantine
Empire, and, perhaps most important of all, the expanding Arabian empire. The oldest
recorded game, found in a 10th-century manuscript, was played between a Baghdad
historian, believed to be a favourite of three successive caliphs, and a pupil.

Muslims brought chess to North Africa, Sicily, and Spain by the 10th century. Eastern Slavs
spread it to Kievan Rus about the same time. The Vikings carried the game as far as Iceland
and England and are believed responsible for the most famous collection of chessmen, 78
walrus-ivory pieces of various sets that were found on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer
Hebrides in 1831 and date from the 11th or 12th century. See Figure 2.

Chess and dice games were periodically banned by kings and religious leaders. For
example, King Louis IX forbade the game in France in 1254. However, the game’s
popularity was helped by its social cachet: a chess set was often associated with wealth,
knowledge, and power. It was a favourite of Kings Henry I, Henry II, John, and Richard I of
England, of Philip II and Alfonso X (the Wise) of Spain, and of Ivan IV (the Terrible) of
Russia. It was known as the royal game as early as the 15th century.

Standardization of rules
The modern rules and appearance of pieces evolved slowly, with widespread regional
variation. By 1300, for example, the pawn had acquired the ability to move two squares on
its first turn, rather than only one at a time as it did in shatranj. But this rule did not win
general acceptance throughout Europe for more than 300 years.

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made its greatest progress after two crucial rule changes that became popular after
1475. Until
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because a pawn that reached the eighth rank could become only a counselor, pawn
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 promotion was a relatively minor factor in the course of a game. But under the new rules
the counselor underwent a sex change and gained vastly increased mobility to become the
most powerful piece on the board—the modern queen. This and the increased value of
pawn promotion added a dynamic new element to chess. Also, the chaturanga piece called
the elephant, which had been limited to a two-square diagonal jump in shatranj, became
the bishop, more than doubling its range.

Until these changes occurred, checkmate was relatively rare, and more often a game was
decided by baring the king. With the new queen and bishop powers, the trench warfare of
medieval chess was replaced by a game in which checkmate could be delivered in as few as
two moves.

The last two major changes in the rules—castling and the en passant capture—took longer
to win acceptance. Both rules were known in the 15th century but had limited usage until
the 18th century. Minor variations in other rules continued until the late 19th century; for
example, it was not acceptable in many parts of Europe as late as the mid-19th century to
promote a pawn to a queen if a player still had the original queen.

Set design
The appearance of the pieces has alternated between simple and ornate since chaturanga
times. The simple design of pieces before 600 CE gradually led to figurative sets depicting
animals, warriors, and noblemen. But Muslim sets of the 9th–12th centuries were often
nonrepresentational and made of simple clay or carved stone following the Islamic
prohibition of images of living creatures. The return to simpler, symbolic shatranj pieces is
believed to have spurred the game’s popularity by making sets easier to make and by
redirecting the players’ attention from the intricate pieces to the game itself.

Stylized sets, often adorned with precious and semi-precious stones, returned to fashion as
the game spread to Europe and Russia. Playing boards, which had monochromatic squares
in the Muslim world, began to have alternating black and white, or red and white, squares
by 1000 CE and were often made of fine wood or marble. Peter I (the Great) of Russia had
special campaign boards made of soft leather that he carried during military efforts.

The king became the largest piece and acquired a crown and sometimes an elaborate
throne and mace. The knight’s close identification with the horse dates back to chaturanga.
The pawn, as the lowest in power and social standing, has traditionally been the smallest
and least representational of the pieces. The queen grew in size after 1475, when its powers
expanded, and changed from a male counselor to the king’s female consort. The bishop was
known by different names—“fool” in French and “elephant” in Russian, for example—and
was not universally recognized by a distinctive mitre until the 19th century. Depiction of
the rook also varied considerably. In Russia it was usually represented as a sailing ship
until the 20th century. Elsewhere it was a warrior in a chariot or a castle turret.

The standard for modern sets was established about 1835 with a simple design by an
Englishman, Nathaniel Cook. After it was patented in 1849, the design was endorsed by
Howard Staunton, then the world’s best player; because of Staunton’s extensive promotion,
it subsequently became known as the Staunton pattern. Only sets based on the Staunton
design are allowed in international competition today. See Figure 3.

The world championship and FIDE

The popularity of chess has for the past two centuries been closely tied to competition,
usually in the form of two-player matches, for the title of world champion. The title was an
unofficial one until 1886, but widespread spectator interest in the game began more than
50 years earlier. The first major international event was a series of six matches held in 1834
between the leading French and British players, Louis-Charles de la Bourdonnais of Paris
and Alexander McDonnell of London, which ended with Bourdonnais’s victory. For the first
time, a major chess event was reported extensively in newspapers and analyzed in books.
Following Bourdonnais’s death in 1840, he was succeeded by Staunton after another match
that gained international attention, Staunton’s defeat of Pierre-Charles Fournier de Saint-
Amant of France in 1843. This match also helped introduce the idea of stakes competition,
since Staunton won the £100 put up by supporters of the two players.

Staunton used his position as unofficial world champion to popularize the Staunton-
pattern set, to promote a uniform set of rules, and to organize the first international
tournament, held in London in 1851. Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen, a German schoolteacher,
was inspired by the Bourdonnais-McDonnell match to turn from problem composing to
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competition, and he won the London tournament and with it recognition as
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organize the first national championship, the First American Chess Congress, in New York
 City in 1857, which set off the first chess craze in the Western Hemisphere. The winner,
Paul Morphy of New Orleans, was recognized as unofficial world champion after defeating
Anderssen in 1858.

The world championship became more formalized after Morphy retired and Anderssen was
defeated by Wilhelm Steinitz of Prague in a match in 1866. Steinitz was the first to claim
the authority to determine how a title match should be held. He set down a series of rules
and financial conditions under which he would defend his status as the world’s foremost
player, and in 1886 he agreed to play Johann Zukertort of Austria in the first match
specifically designated as being for the world championship. Steinitz reserved the right to
determine whose challenge he would accept and when and how often he would defend his
title.

Steinitz’s successor, Emanuel Lasker of Germany, proved a more demanding champion

than Steinitz in arranging matches. He took long periods, from 1897 to 1907 and later from
1910 to 1921, without defending his title. After the leading national chess federations, the
British and German, failed to arrange a match between Lasker and any of his leading
challengers on the eve of World War I, the momentum for an independent international
authority began to grow.

The controversy over the championship was eased when José Raúl Capablanca of Cuba
defeated Lasker in 1921 and won the agreement, at a tournament in London in 1922, of the
world’s other leading players to a written set of rules for championship challenges. Under
those rules, any player who met certain financial conditions (in particular, guaranteeing a
$10,000 stake) could challenge the World Champion. While the top players were trying to
adhere to the London Rules, representatives of 15 countries met in Paris in 1924 to
organize the first permanent international chess federation, known as FIDE, its French
acronym for Fédération Internationale des Échecs.

The London Rules worked smoothly in 1927 when Capablanca was dethroned by Alexander
Alekhine, the first Russian-born champion, but then proved to be a financial obstacle in
Capablanca’s bid for a rematch. FIDE’s attempts to intervene failed. Alekhine was widely
criticized for manipulating the rules, and when he died in 1946 FIDE assumed the
authority to organize world championship matches.

From 1948, when FIDE organized a match tournament to fill the vacancy created by
Alekhine’s death, until 1975 the FIDE format worked without major problems. The
international federation organized three-year cycles of regional and international
competitions to determine the challengers for the World Champion and solicited bids for
match sites. The champion no longer had a veto power over opponents and was required to
defend the title every three years.

FIDE also took over the Women’s World Championship and biennial Olympiad team
championships, which originated in the 1920s. In addition, the federation developed new
championship titles, particularly for junior players in various age groups. It also created a
system for recognizing top players by arithmetic rating and by titles based on tournament
performance. The highest title, after World Champion, is International Grandmaster, of
whom there are now more than 500 in the world.

The easing and eventual end of the Cold War spurred international chess by reducing
barriers. By the mid-1990s close to 2,000 tournaments registered with FIDE were held
each year—more than 50 times the number during the 1950s. Amateur chess expanded
sharply. Membership in the U.S. Chess Federation jumped from 2,100 in 1957 to more than
70,000 in 1973.

All World Champions and challengers from 1951 to 1969 were Soviet citizens, and all the
championship matches were held in Moscow with small prizes and limited international
publicity. The victory of Robert J. (Bobby) Fischer of the United States in 1972 was an
abrupt change. Fischer’s demands spurred an increase in the prize fund to $250,000—a
sum greater than all previous title matches combined. After winning the highly publicized
match, Fischer insisted on a greater say in match rules than had any previous champion in
the FIDE era. In particular, he objected to a rule, used by FIDE since 1951, that limited
championship matches to 24 games. FIDE dropped the rule, but Fischer demanded further
concessions. In the end he refused to defend his title; in 1975 he became the first champion
to lose it by default.

Fischer’s successor, Anatoly Karpov of the Soviet Union, reigned for 10 years but was
dethroned in 1985 by a countryman and bitter rival, Garry Kasparov. Kasparov then

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agreed to defend his title under the federation’s rules three times during 1986–90, winning
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time. However, when Nigel Short of England won the right to challenge Kasparov for
the championship in 1993, he and Kasparov decided instead to play the match under the
 auspices of a new organization, the Professional Chess Association (PCA). Before Kasparov
defeated Short in London in late 1993 in the first PCA championship, FIDE disqualified
Kasparov and organized its own world championship match, won by Karpov.

FIDE began holding annual “knockout” tournaments in 1999 to determine its

championship. Alexander Khalifman of Russia won the first tournament, which was held in
Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2000 the tournament venue was split between New Delhi, India, and
Tehrān, Iran, and was won by Viswanathan Anand of India. Meanwhile, Kasparov lost a
title match to Vladimir Kramnik of Russia in 2000.

Following negotiations with FIDE, which recognized Kramnik as the “classical” world chess
champion, he agreed to a unification match in 2006 with FIDE’s challenger, the Bulgarian
grandmaster Veselin Topalov, who had won the 2005 FIDE World Championship
Tournament. Kramnik won the match. As part of the unification contract, the winner
agreed to risk the consolidated title in FIDE’s 2007 World Championship Tournament.
Anand won the tournament and successfully defended the title against Kramnik in a 12-
game match in 2008. Anand defeated Topalov in 2010 and Israel player Boris Gelfand in
2012 to retain his title. In 2013 Magnus Carlsen of Norway defeated Anand after only 10
games of a 12-game match to become, at age 22, the youngest-ever world chess champion.

Women in chess
Separation of the sexes in chess dates from about 1500 with the introduction of the queen.
Chess became a much faster, more exciting game and, thus, came to be perceived as a more
masculine pursuit. Women were often barred from the coffeehouses and taverns where
chess clubs developed in the 19th century. However, women players achieved distinction
separately from men by the middle of the century. The first chess clubs specifically for
women were organized in the Netherlands in 1847. The first chess book written by a
woman, The ABC of Chess, by “A Lady” (H.I. Cooke), appeared in England in 1860 and
went into 10 editions. The first women’s tournament was sponsored in 1884 by the Sussex
Chess Association.

Women also gained distinction in postal and problem chess during this period. An
American woman, Ellen Gilbert, defeated a strong English amateur, George Gossip, twice
in an international correspondence match in 1879—announcing checkmate in 21 moves in
one game and in 35 moves in the other. Edith Winter-Wood composed more than 2,000
problems, 700 of which appeared in a book published in 1902.

The first woman player to gain attention in over-the-board competition with men was Vera
Menchik (1906–44) of Great Britain. She won the first Women’s World Championship, a
tournament organized by FIDE in 1927, and the next six women’s championship
tournaments, in 1930–39. Her good results against men in British events led to invitations
to some of the strongest pre-World War II tournaments, including Carlsbad 1929
(tournaments are identified by venue and year) and Moscow 1935. Among the strong male
masters who lost to her were the world champion Max Euwe, Samuel Reshevsky, Sultan
Khan, Jacques Mieses, Edgar Colle, and Frederick Yates. She was also one of the first
women chess professionals.

Women’s chess received a major boost when the Soviet Union endorsed separate women’s
tournaments as part of a general encouragement of the game. The 1924 women’s
championship of Leningrad was the first women’s tournament sponsored by any
government. Massive events, larger than anything open to either sex in the West, followed;
nearly 5,000 women took part in the preliminary sections of the 1936 Soviet women’s
championship, for example.

Improvements in playing strength ensued and led to Soviet domination of women’s chess
for more than 30 years. After Menchik’s death, FIDE held a 16-player tournament in
Moscow during the winter of 1949–50 to fill the vacancy. Soviet women took the top four
places.

The Women’s World Championship has been decided by matches or elimination match
tournaments organized by FIDE since 1953. After Menchik’s death the next three
champions were Ludmilla Rudenko of Ukraine and Elizaveta Bykova and Olga Rubtsova of
Russia. But, with the victory of Nona Gaprindashvili in 1962, an era of supremacy by
Georgian players began. Gaprindashvili held the title for 16 years and became the first
woman to earn the title of International Grandmaster. (FIDE established separate titles of
International Woman Master in 1950 and International Woman Grandmaster in 1977.)
Gaprindashvili was succeeded by another Georgian, Maya Chiburdanidze, in 1978.
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Soviet domination of women’s chess ended with the defeat of Chiburdanidze by Xie Jun, of
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China, in 1991 and the rise of the three Polgár sisters, Susan, Zsófia, and Judit. The Polgárs
 of Budapest were the most impressive women
prodigies ever; each had achieved grandmaster-
level performances by age 15. They also
distinguished themselves by generally avoiding
women-only competitions, until Susan Polgar zoom_in
defeated Xie for the women’s championship in
1996.

In the 1990s a series of men-versus-women events

were organized as the difference in playing Zsófia, Susan, and Judit Polgár
strength narrowed. In 1995 a team of five senior
male grandmasters, including the former world
champions Boris Spassky and Vasily Smyslov, was
beaten 26 1/2 to 23 1/2 in a match against five leading women. Among the women was Judit
Polgár, ranked eighth in the world on the international rating lists issued in July and
October 2005 by FIDE, the highest level any woman had ever achieved.

Zhu Chen of China won the 2001 FIDE Women’s World Championship Tournament. FIDE
had difficulty funding further events in the series, so the next tournament did not take
place until 2004. The 2004 tournament was won by Antoaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria, and
the championship went back on a regular two-year cycle. The next champions were Xu
Yuhua of China (2006–08), Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia (2008–10), and Hou Yifan of
China (2010–12), who at age 16 was the youngest women’s world chess champion.
Beginning in 2011, FIDE decided on a new system for determining the woman’s chess
championship. In odd years a two-player match would be held, but in even years the title
would be determined by a knockout tournament among 64 players. Hou defended her
championship in 2011, but the 2012 tournament was won by Anna Ushenina of Ukraine.
Hou regained the title in 2013.

Women's world chess champions

championship
name nationality
reign

1927–44 Vera Francevna Menchik-Stevenson* Russian

1950–53 Ludmilla Rudenko Ukrainian

1953–56 Elizaveta Bykova Russian

1956–58 Olga Rubtsova Russian

1958–62 Elizaveta Bykova Russian

1962–78 Nona Gaprindashvili Georgian

1978–91 Maya Chiburdanidze Georgian

1991–96 Xie Jun Chinese

1996–99 Susan Polgar** Hungarian

1999–2001 Xie Jun Chinese

2001–04 Zhu Chen Chinese

2004–06 Antoaneta Stefanova Bulgarian

2006–08 Xu Yuhua Chinese

2008–10 Alexandra Kosteniuk Russian

2010–12 Hou Yifan Chinese

2012–13 Anna Ushenina Ukrainian

2013–15 Hou Yifan Chinese

2015– Mariya Muzychuk Ukrainian

*Killed in air raid on London in 1944, title left vacant.

**Rejected conditions for title defense, which Xie Jun then regained.
Subsequent champions decided in "knockout" tournaments.

Development of theory
There are three recognized phases in a chess game: the opening, where piece development
and control of the centre predominate; the middlegame, where maneuvering in defense
and attack against the opponent’s king or weaknesses occurs; and the endgame, where,
generally after several piece exchanges, pawn promotion becomes the dominant theme.
Chess theory consists of opening knowledge, tactics (or combinations), positional analysis
(particularly pawn structures), strategy (the making of long-range plans and goals), and
close endgame
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Philidor
account.and the birth of chess theory
 Early chess players recognized that a typical game could be divided into three parts, each
with its own character and priorities: the opening stage, when a player develops the pieces
from their starting squares; a middlegame stage, in which plans are conceived and carried
out; and an endgame stage, following several exchanges and captures, in which the player
with the superior chances tries to convert an advantage into victory.

Books analyzing a few basic opening moves, elementary middlegame combinations, and
simple elements of endgame technique appeared as early as the 15th century. About 1620
an Italian master, Gioacchino Greco, wrote an analysis of a series of composed games that
illustrated two contrasting approaches to chess. Those games pit a material-minded player,
who attempts to win as many of the opponent’s pieces as possible, against an opponent
who sacrifices material in pursuit of checkmate—and usually wins. Greco, regarded as the
first chess professional, emphasized tactics. His games were filled with pretty combinations
made possible by poor defensive play. They had considerable influence in popularizing
chess and in showing that there were different theories about how it should be played.

The first coordinated explanation of how chess games are won came in the 18th century
from François-André Philidor of France. Philidor, a composer of music, was regarded as
the world’s best chess player for nearly 50 years. In 1749 Philidor wrote and published
L’Analyze des échecs (Chess Analyzed), an enormously influential book that appeared in
more than 100 editions.

In Analyze Philidor used apparently fictitious games to illustrate his principles for
conducting a strategic, rather than tactical, battle. His comments on certain 1 e4 e5
openings were copied for decades by other masters, and his analysis of king, rook, and
bishop against king and rook was the first extensive examination of a particular endgame.
But it was Philidor’s middlegame advice that was his greatest legacy. He emphasized the
role of planning: Once all a player’s pieces are developed, that player should try to form an
overall goal, such as kingside attack, that coordinates the forces. Philidor also placed a
premium on anticipating enemy threats rather than merely concentrating on one’s own
attack.

Greco and previous writers had explored the tactical interplay of two or three pieces. But
Philidor believed that the significance of the pawns had been overlooked and drew
particular attention to their weaknesses and strengths. His most famous comment—that
“pawns are the very life of the game”—is often cited without his explanation of why they are
important: because, he said, pawns alone form the basis for attack.

Philidor believed that a mobile mass of pawns is the most important positional factor in the
middlegame and that an attack will fail unless the pawns to sustain it are properly
supported. He warned against allowing pawns to be isolated from one another, doubled on
the same file, or made backward—that is, unguarded by another pawn and incapable of
being safely advanced. He linked the qualities of pawns to other pieces and was the first to
emphasize how a bishop could be bad or good depending on how restricted it was by a fixed
pawn structure. He also advocated the exchange of an f-pawn for an enemy e-pawn because
it would partially open the file for a castled rook at f1. While previous authors had shown
how pawns or other pieces could be temporarily sacrificed in checkmating or material-
gaining combinations, Philidor illustrated the purely positional sacrifice in which a player
obtains compensation such as superior piece mobility or pawn structure.

Morphy and the theory of attack

From 1750 to 1769 a group of masters from Modena, Italy—Ercole del Rio, Giambattista
Lolli, and Domenico Ponziani—criticized Philidor’s ideas. They believed that he had
exaggerated the importance of the pawns at the expense of the other pieces and had
minimized the power of a direct attack on the enemy king. By analyzing the play of 16th-
century Italian masters, the Modena school showed that games could be won in fewer than
20 moves through speedy piece mobilization, compared with Philidor’s slow-developing
pawn marches.

There followed a proliferation of speculative pawn sacrifices in the opening, called gambits,
in order to achieve rapid mobilization and open lines for an attack. Checkmating attacks,
often with startling sacrifices in concluding combinations, became the hallmark of many
players of the 19th century. These leading masters were described as members of the
Romantic school of chess.

The ideas of the Modena school were not fully appreciated until they appeared, in slightly
different form, in the games of Paul Morphy, the first American recognized as the world’s
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 At the age of 22 Morphy retired from serious chess. Morphy remains the only great chess
thinker who left no written legacy.

Morphy’s contemporaries knew as much about the openings as he did, and some of them
could calculate combinations as well as he. But Morphy understood how and when to
attack better than anyone else. This enabled him not only to win favourable positions but
also to avoid loss in inferior positions. After he defeated Adolf Anderssen, the greatest of
the Romantics, by a lopsided score of 7–2, a supporter asked Anderssen why he had not
sacrificed his pieces brilliantly against the American, as he had against other masters.
“Morphy won’t let me,” Anderssen is reputed to have replied.

Morphy appreciated that superior development—getting pieces onto good squares in the
first 10 to 15 moves—was relatively unimportant in the semiclosed, blocked pawn
structures that Philidor had embraced. But, as the centre or kingside became more open, an
advantage in development increased in value. In Morphy’s best-known games, pawns and
knights played minor roles. Pawns were often sacrificed so that the queen, rooks, and
bishops could join the attack as soon as possible. The first priority for Morphy was the
initiative, the ability to force matters. Superior development in a position with few centre
pawns conferred the initiative on one player. In the games of lesser players the initiative
might pass back and forth as players err. But Morphy rarely failed to bring an initiative to
fruition.

Steinitz and the theory of equilibrium

Morphy’s eventual successor, Wilhelm Steinitz, reigned as world champion until 1894,
when he was 58. The Prague-born Steinitz managed to retain his superiority for so long
because he developed new principles of the middlegame, particularly in closed or
semiclosed positions, that only his successor, Emanuel Lasker, and Lasker’s
contemporaries fully appreciated. Steinitz said his “modern school” was guided by two
premises: first, that the natural outcome of a game is a draw because of the inherent
balance between the forces of White and Black and, second, that checkmate is the ultimate
but not the first objective of the game.

Steinitz began his career as a tactical, combinational player in the Morphy style. But in his
late thirties he developed insight into subtle positional characteristics that take precedence
in positions in which the centre is fully or partially blocked by immobile pawns. Steinitz
tried to answer the mystery of why some attacks succeed, regardless of how skillful the
defender, while others fail, regardless of how talented the attacker. A failed attack, he
added, often results in defeat for the attacker, whose forces suddenly become poorly
coordinated in the face of a counterattack.

Steinitz concluded that in a typical position each side has certain small advantages which
tend to balance one another. For example, a player may have weakened the opponent’s
pawns but at the expense of trading a bishop for a slightly less-valuable knight. An attack is
justified only when the balance has been upset, either by the player’s mistakes or the
opponent’s good moves. Morphy’s advantage in development was one way of upsetting the
balance. But by the 1870s, after Morphy’s games became familiar to all masters, it became
harder and harder to obtain a lead in development against an unwilling opponent.

Steinitz realized that the way to justify a decisive attack in the post-Morphy era was to
accumulate small, often subtle, advantages—for example, having two bishops when one’s
opponent has two knights, having an entrenched knight at a fortified outpost, or having
greater maneuvering space. In his games Steinitz showed how slow-evolving maneuvers in
the opening, particularly with knights, paid dividends in the middlegame if the centre was
closed. He originated the term “hole” to mean a vulnerable square that has lost its pawn
protection and can be occupied favourably by an enemy piece.

While a lead in development may be transient, other advantages, such as a superior pawn
structure, could be nurtured into the endgame, Steinitz said. Structural weaknesses
generally involve pawns that are difficult to defend or squares (especially in the centre or
around the king) that enemy pieces can occupy without being dislodged by pawn attacks.
The following common pawn weaknesses are disadvantageous in direct proportion to their
exploitability, which tends to increase as pieces are exchanged. A pawn with no friendly
pawns on adjoining files is called an isolated pawn; isolated pawns may confer middlegame
compensation through control of important squares (if located in the centre) or by giving
rooks adjoining open files along which to attack. A pawn on an open file whose advance is
restrained by an enemy pawn on an adjoining file and that is unguardable by any other
pawn is termed a backward pawn. Two pawns that occupy the same file (through captures)
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 The small advantages could be converted at an appropriate moment to material by means
of attack. He added that a player who does not attack when in a position advantageous
enough to justify it will lose the advantage. Unlike the Romantics, who relentlessly aimed
for the enemy king, Steinitz argued that the nature of the position dictated whether to
target the kingside or queenside. The win of a mere pawn was in the large majority of cases
fatal among first-class masters.

Some subtle advantages do not become significant until the endgame, Steinitz found. For
example, after routine pawn captures and recaptures, a player is often left with three pawns
each on the kingside and queenside, while the opponent has four on the kingside and two
on the queenside. The kingside pawns are often held back near or on their original squares
for king protection. But, advancing on the queenside where the player has a majority of the
pawns, referred to as a queenside majority, can create a powerful passed pawn that may
prove decisive in the late middlegame or endgame. On the other hand, one of Steinitz’s
students, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, popularized the “minority attack,” in which the player
with fewer queenside pawns advances them in certain positions in order to weaken his
opponent’s pawns.

Steinitz was also the first master of defensive play. Even when playing the White pieces, he
often invited his opponent to open the centre by exchanging pawns or to be the first to
cross the fourth rank. He reasoned that such attacks must be premature if the equilibrium
was in balance and so could be punished after patient defensive play.

While Philidor was known for his writings and Morphy for his games, Steinitz left a legacy
of both. In match play he consistently defeated the leading Romantics—Adolf Anderssen,
Joseph Blackburne, Johann Zukertort, and Mikhail Chigorin. He is regarded as the first
player to take a scientific approach to chess.

The classical era

Among Steinitz’s greatest followers were two Germans, Emanuel Lasker and Siegbert
Tarrasch. Lasker dethroned Steinitz as world champion in 1894 and refined his theory of
defensive play. He showed that even cramped positions yielded strong counterattacking
chances. Also, he was the first player to appreciate the psychological nature of chess and
found that, by accepting allegedly bad positions or ones with merely inferior pawn
structures, he placed a psychological burden on many of his opponents by encouraging
their optimism. His practical approach to the game enabled Lasker to hold the world
championship title until 1921. But, as a later world champion, Max Euwe, said of him, “It is
not possible to learn much from him; one can only stand and wonder.”

Tarrasch took Steinitz’s principles in a different direction. He regarded the control of space
and mobility of pieces as much more important than Steinitz believed and felt that these
qualities would compensate for structural pawn weaknesses. He was the champion of a
particular pawn structure featuring an isolated d-pawn. Steinitz saw such a pawn as a
liability that could be advantageously blockaded by an enemy knight and eventually
captured. But Tarrasch noted that the same pawn could support one or two of his own
knights on more advanced squares, and this often outweighed the apparent weakness. His
games show a relentless effort to get all his pieces on their best squares and to gain control
of more space. This led Tarrasch to original attitudes toward material, such as stating that
two bishops and a rook were roughly equivalent to two rooks and a knight. He hated the
cramped positions that Lasker mastered and relished. Tarrasch preferred to use a superior
centre to attack on both wings of the board at the same time. As the world’s foremost chess
author for more than three decades, Tarrasch popularized Steinitz’s findings, often by
reducing them to simple rules such as “develop knights before bishops” or “don’t move
your queen early in the game.”

Lasker was finally dethroned by Capablanca, who added little that was new to the theory of
the game but showed how the teachings of Steinitz and Tarrasch could be molded into a
nearly unbeatable formula. Capablanca perfected the skill that players call technique, the
nurturing of tiny advantages until they become decisive. Capablanca paid little attention to
the opening and played both 1 e4, the favourite of masters until about 1910, and 1 d4, a
move more likely to keep the centre closed. He preferred middlegames with clear-cut plans.
But he argued that each move, even in the opening, should further that goal—a contrast
with Morphy, who appeared to develop pieces for the sake of development.

Capablanca created a style of play that allowed him to minimize risk; he went a record eight
years, from 1916 to 1924, without losing a tournament or match game. Other leading
players, among them Akiba Rubinstein and Carl Schlechter, developed their own
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minimum-risk techniques as they tried to perfect the ideas of Steinitz. Material advantage
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became a high priority. Sacrifices declined in frequency and gambits almost disappeared at
account.
the master level. The absence of new ideas in chess was reflected in the appearance of
 agreed draws in fewer than 20 moves—ironically called “grandmaster draws”—in the first
two decades of the 20th century.

Hypermodernism
A major school of chess sprang up after World War I with an assault by central European
masters on Steinitz’s approach to the centre and the dogmatic rules set down by Tarrasch.
The Hypermoderns, as they were known, delighted in showing how the guidelines of the
previous generation could be violated profitably. In one of his favourite openings, Aron
Nimzowitsch began with three pawn advances followed by a move by his queen. His
colleague Richard Réti wrote that the new generation was interested not in rules but in
exceptions.

The most important exceptions concerned the centre squares, chiefly e4, e5, d4, and d5.
The Hypermoderns believed that the central pawn structure that had been a goal since
Philidor could be a liability because it provides the opponent with a target. It was not the
occupation of the centre that was desirable but rather its control, they argued. Gyula
Breyer, one of the Hypermoderns, summed up their approach when he joked, “After the
first move 1 e4 White’s game is in the last throes.”

At the heart of Hypermodernism was a new approach to the opening. The two leading
members of the new school, Réti and Nimzowitsch, attacked Tarrasch’s emphasis on
building a solid centre in the first dozen moves, starting with 1 e4 or 1 d4. Réti often began
a game with 1 Nf3 and did not advance more than one pawn past the third before the
middlegame had begun. Instead, he and the other Hypermoderns rediscovered the
fianchetto, or development of a bishop on its longest diagonal—i.e., b2 and g2 for White, b7
and g7 for Black. Fianchettoed bishops had been a favourite of Howard Staunton in the
1830s but fell out of favour after Morphy popularized open centres. Réti’s idea was to
attack the centre with pieces posted on the wings. In one of his most controversial
maneuvers, he shifted his queen to a1 to emphasize the power of his bishop at b2.

The Hypermoderns invited their opponents to advance pawns in the centre and in some
cases tried to provoke them. For example, Alexander Alekhine, a future world champion
who explored Hypermodern ideas in the 1920s, developed an opening that consisted of
meeting 1 e4 with 1…Nf6 in order to tempt White to advance to e5, where the pawn might
later come under fire.

Nimzowitsch also played originally in the opening. Previously, masters almost

automatically answered 1 d4 with 1…d5 so as not to allow White to dominate the centre
with 2 e4. Nimzowitsch, however, played 1…Nf6 with the idea of controlling the crucial e4
square with minor pieces, a bishop pin of a White knight at c3 and/or a fianchettoed bishop
at b7. His systems, known as the Queen’s Indian Defense and Nimzo-Indian Defense,
remain among the most popular in competitive play.

Nimzowitsch’s exploration of openings that had been previously explored and found
wanting led him to another Hypermodern tenet: the voluntary surrender of the centre.
Steinitz had claimed to have originated this idea, but Nimzowitsch elaborated on it in
several games and in his writings. For example, a common pawn chain occurs in the centre,
when White pawns occupy d4 and e5 and Black pawns occupy d5 and e6. Tarrasch had
shown how Black obtains counterchances by attacking the enemy centre by advancing the
c-pawn to c5 and f-pawn to f6. Tarrasch’s opponents tried to maintain the chain of White
pawns on their squares. But Nimzowitsch tried to find the right time to exchange White’s
pawns (dxc5 and, after…f6, then exf6). His goal was to occupy the deserted squares at d4
and e5 with his minor pieces—i.e., bishops and knights.

Nimzowitsch was also influential in the development of defensive ideas of prophylaxis—the

anticipation, prevention, and restraint of the opponent’s play.

The Soviet school

By the late 1920s the new approach to the centre had been quickly assimilated. Most of the
world’s leading masters, even Capablanca and Tarrasch, had tried Hypermodern openings.
The next generation, which emerged in the 1930s and, after the interval of World War II,
the late 1940s, sought to find exceptions to other rules. The leaders of the next generation
came from the Soviet Union, whose players dominated the world championship from 1948
to 1972.

The Soviets were distinguished by the high priority they placed on gaining the initiative, a
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 The Soviets valued the initiative—the ability to force matters—more than most positional
considerations. While the Hypermoderns and Lasker often challenged their opponents to
make the first aggressive moves, the Soviets regarded the initiative as vitally important.
When defending, they rejected the solid if passive approach of Steinitz and Tarrasch and
tried to generate a counterattack.

The striving for the initiative led the Soviets to modify Hypermodern ideas about the centre
by analyzing openings to find dynamic, tactical play regardless of pawn coordination or
centre control. For example, David Bronstein and Isaac Boleslavsky showed in the King’s
Indian Defense how White could be allowed a free rein to occupy the centre by advancing
the c-, d-, e-, and even f-pawns. But Black could obtain counterplay by advancing the e-
pawn to e5 and exchanging it on d4—a surrender of the centre that had been anathema to
Tarrasch.

Since the Hypermoderns had demonstrated that Black did not have to meet 1 e4 with 1…e5,
the Soviets devoted enormous attention to the most aggressive alternative, the Sicilian
Defense (1…c5), which also involves a surrender of the centre. Although White gains more
space and mobility, Boleslavsky showed how Black could find equalizing counterchances by
advancing the d-pawn one square and the e-pawn two squares. This creates a hole at d5
and makes the d-pawn backward but enables Black to maximize use of the c-file and attack
the White e-pawn.

The Soviets sought unstable positions, in which each player had several pluses and
minuses. Mikhail Botvinnik, the first Soviet master to win the world championship,
popularized a variation of the French Defense in which Black exchanges a good bishop in
order to ruin White’s pawn structure. Botvinnik accepted several weak squares because of
the absence of the bishop and was often forced to castle queenside, rather than kingside.
But his games revealed rich resources for counterplay on kingside or queenside.

Another means of obtaining the instability cherished by the Soviets was by material
sacrifices. Russian masters from the 1930s to the ’50s were especially fond of trading a rook
for a bishop or knight. Such sacrifices had been used since the Romantic era as part of a
kingside attack. But the Soviets used it instead to obtain positional compensation, such as
to ruin an opponent’s pawn structure or improve their own or to eliminate a powerful
enemy bishop or knight.

Botvinnik’s major contributions included finding an optimal way of preparing for a game.
He studied the strengths and weaknesses of opponents he was likely to meet in the near
future. He analyzed the amount of time he had spent on particular moves in order to think
more efficiently. He played training games to test his nerves and concentration skills under
conditions simulating tournament play—even encouraging an opponent to smoke
cigarettes.

But most of all Botvinnik developed highly complex opening systems, in openings such as
the Queen’s Gambit Declined, English Opening, French Defense, and Nimzo-Indian
Defense. Instead of discovering a new opening move that might win a single game and then
become useless, Botvinnik tried to work out complicated systems that would last for years.
For example, his analysis of the Queen’s Gambit Declined in the late 1930s won games for
him nearly 10 years later. Typically, the Botvinnik Variation of the Queen’s Gambit
Declined leads to a highly unbalanced middlegame in which Black sacrifices a pawn and
ruins his kingside pawn structure but obtains excellent chances on the queenside, where
Black has four pawns to White’s two. His approach to the opening had a great influence
during the 1950s and ’60s as leading masters tried to analyze openings as far as the 20th or
25th move.

The pragmatists
The most important changes in chess thinking after 1970 concerned a more practical
approach to competition. The Soviets maintained that by unbalancing a position they
placed an onus on each player to find the best moves. In quieter positions, second-best
moves could be permitted. But in sharp positions, the Soviets said, failing to find the
correct move would often mean losing the initiative or turning an advantage into a
disadvantage.

A new attitude became evident in the games of Fischer and his successor as world
champion, Karpov, in the 1970s. The pragmatist approach holds that games are decided
not by brilliant moves but by bad ones made under the influence of a shortage of time.
There are only a few times during a game when a player must find the best move, the
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Soviets’ perfectionism led to an increase in games ending in
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 There were also some subtle changes in thinking from the 1970s through the ’90s about
conducting the late opening and early middlegame stages of a game. Among them was a
depreciation of the bishop: The Hypermoderns had attacked Tarrasch’s high opinion of an
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unobstructed bishop and said a bishop could profitably be traded for a knight.
Soviet players often traded bishop for knight for minimal compensation. They also often
exchanged their good bishop, the one less encumbered by pawns, and retained their bad
one for slight positional compensation.

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