page_title: Chess
section_title: Modern
hierarchical_section_title: Chess / Place in culture / Modern
caption_attribution_description: The Red King asleep, by John Tenniel for "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll
context_page_description: Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 square grid. Played by millions of people worldwide, chess is believed to be derived from the Indian game chaturanga sometime before the 7th century. Chaturanga is also the likely ancestor of the East Asian strategy games xiangqi, janggi, and shogi. Chess reached Europe via Persia and Arabia by the 9th century, due to the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The queen and bishop assumed their current powers in Spain in the late 15th century, and the modern rules were standardized in the 19th century.
  Play involves no hidden information. Each player begins with 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. Each piece type moves differently, with the most powerful being the queen and the least powerful the pawn. The objective is to checkmate the opponent's king by placing it under an inescapable threat of capture. To this end, a player's pieces are used to attack and capture the opponent's pieces, while supporting one another.
context_section_description: During the Age of Enlightenment, chess was viewed as a means of self-improvement. Benjamin Franklin, in his article "The Morals of Chess" (1750), wrote:
  The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn:
  I. Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action [...]
  II. Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: – the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations [...]
  III. Caution, not to make our moves too hastily [...]
  Chess was occasionally criticized in the 19th century as a waste of time.
  Chess is taught to children in schools around the world today. Many schools host chess clubs, and there are many scholastic tournaments specifically for children. Tournaments are held regularly in many countries, hosted by organizations such as the United States Chess Federation and the National Scholastic Chess Foundation.
  Chess is often depicted in the arts; significant works where chess plays a key role range from Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess to Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, to Vladimir Nabokov's The Defense, to The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig. Chess is featured in films like Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and Satyajit Ray's The Chess Players.
  Chess is also present in contemporary popular culture. For example, the characters in Star Trek play a futuristic version of the game called "Tri-Dimensional Chess". "Wizard's Chess" is featured in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter plays. The hero of Searching for Bobby Fischer struggles against adopting the aggressive and misanthropic views of a world chess champion. Chess is used as the core theme in the musical Chess by Tim Rice, Björn Ulvaeus, and Benny Andersson. The thriller film Knight Moves is about a chess grandmaster who is accused of being a serial killer. Pawn Sacrifice, starring Tobey Maguire as Bobby Fischer and Liev Schreiber as Boris Spassky, depicts the drama surrounding the 1972 World Chess Championship in Iceland during the Cold War.
caption: Through the Looking-Glass: the Red King is snoring. Illustration by Sir John Tenniel.
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