Hstory of chess
“A book cannot by itself teach how to play. It can only serve as a guide, and the rest must be learned by experience.”
Chess has a long and storied history. The game has changed quite a bit from its earliest forms in India. The modern iteration we enjoy today wasn't known until the 16th century. There were no clocks, and the pieces were not standardised until the 19th century.
- Development of chess
Chess, itself, was developing greatly during the 1800s. The most famous games of this period were swashbuckling attacking games - strong defensive ideas hadn't been learned yet. If a player wasn't sacrificing their pieces right and left trying to checkmate their opponent violently, it wasn't a fun game! During this attacking era in chess, American player Paul Morphy entered the scene.
- Steinitz
Steinitz held the title of world champion until 1894 when Emanuel Lasker soundly defeated him (10-5). Their rematch, three years later, was even more lopsided: Lasker won 10-2. Lasker would hold the title for 27 years, by far the longest reign of any chess world champion.
Positional chess, as Steinitz and Lasker displayed, now become more and more popular. The prevailing theory until about the 1920s was to occupy the centre of the board during the opening, usually with pawns. The most common openings were the Ruy Lopez, the Giuoco Piano, the Queen's Gambit, the French Defense, and the Four Knights' Game. These are relatively quiet openings from which both sides slowly try to accumulate small advantages in space, key squares, diagonals, and files.
In the 1920s, a new school of thought entered top-level chess - hypermodernism. The main idea is to control the centre with minor pieces instead of merely occupying it with pawns. These new ideas were highlighted in the games and theories of a new generation of top talent: Aron Nimzovich, Efim Bogolyubov, Richard Reti, and Ernst Grunfeld. In this period, new openings and development schemes were formed in many popular openings, like the Indian Defenses, the Grunfeld, and the Benoni.
“In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before everything else. For whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and opening must be studied in relation to the end game.”
