Chess may be among the most genius games of all time. Although invented long ago, it remains one of the most-played of all board games and is considered by many, including myself, to be one of the most intellectually challenging and intricate games of all time. The amount of strategy that can be employed in trying to conquer your opponent is virtually infinite, as he is constantly acting and reacting to your moves and vice versa. This creates a type of extremely dynamical tug-of-war, all in an attempt to trap your opponent's king before he can trap yours.
The fact that the most commonly used game pieces are fashioned after medieval "avatars" (pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, queen, and king) only helps create the sense of battle. And chess
is a battle, one that requires strategy, innate intelligence, taking risks, and an ability to anticipitate your opponent's moves. You must know the strengths and weaknesses of each game piece, and how to use their abilites to your advantage at the right time.
Chess requires the development of an offense
and a defense, both at the same time. Even more challenging is trying to manipulate your pieces to attack and defend in a very small space. Sometimes a choice must be made to hold on a potentially beneficial move to capture an opponent's piece because it would
remove the defense that you were providing for a more powerful piece, one that is even more important than the piece you were intending to capture. Some offensive moves are even impossible to carry out because it would leave the king in jeopardy of capture. Such dynamics allow for a great deal of thought and consideration in planning your next move.
Another facet of chess thrown into the mix is the ability to set traps. You can often lure either the rook or queen in by giving your opponent the illusion that if he moves those pieces into a certain position he will be better off (maybe he will come close to your king, or close to capturing an important piece). Since the trap is set, if you can reel them in, you can pounce and take them out on the next move. Even more lucrative traps can be set. Traps can be laid out so that your opponent is absolutely "stuck", in that no matter which move he makes, one of your pieces is set to capture him on the very next move. Setting up traps can take some several moves, and sometimes can be frustrating when your opponent does not buy the trap, in which case you must subsequently abandon the plan. Your opponent may see it coming from a mile away, or he may simply be making other moves for other reasons. All the while this is going on, you must have the ability to anticipate several moves ahead to avoid falling into the traps that your opponent is attempting to create.
What makes chess vastly different than checkers, and thus allowing for a more challenging and strategic game, is the different abilities of each game character. Unlike the game of checkers, in which all checkers have the same exact abilities, each character in chess has a set of strengths and weaknesses. Based upon these abilities, each game piece also has a relative power (a value), creating a sort of hiearchy, with the queen at the top, and the pawns on the bottom. People tend to learn this hiearchy innately because they learn which piece is more powerful than the next simply by playing. Queens are the most powerful because they can move any which way they want, horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, for as many spaces as she wants, as long as nothing is in her way.
Sacrifice plays a big strategic role in the game of chess. Oftentimes you will sacrifice a mid-level piece, such as a knight, bishop, or rook, respectively, in order to capture a higher level piece, such as a bishop, rook, or queen, respectively. To take it a step down, the poor pawns are constantly being sacrificied so that you may capture your opponent's more powerful pieces. Or instead of being sacrificed on purpose, oftentimes pawns will seem to get killed for no reason, just as a necessary part of the war in order to advance your army with the sole goal of capturing the leader of the opposing army.
While the pawns are weak and can only move 1 space forward at a time, they do have some worth towards the end of the game because they can be promoted to any game character that you wish (usually people choose a queen). This is akin to when a checker piece is "king-ed". This requires more strategy in consideration of whether to sacrifice a pawn or not, as it is disadvantageous for a player to have all of his pawns eliminated, unless he anticipates having a lot of stronger pieces left towards the end.
Chess has probably been played since at least the 6th century, originating in India. In imagining how many games have actually been played since Chess was first invented, it boggles the mind to think that probably not one of those games were exactly duplicated by another game somewhere else, somewhen. The sheer number of games that can be played is an
extremely huge number, although some controversy exists as to what that number might be. The most common derivation is the Shannon number, estimated to be
10^120 games. To put that number in perspective, the number of atoms in the
entire universe is estimated to be between
4 x 10^78 and
6 x 10^79 atoms. I think it is safe to say that if you love chess, you will probably never become bored of it!
Given the sheer amount of games that can be played, and the computational power involved in analyzing moves, it is no wonder that computers are excellent chess players. They have been playing chess since the days of the first computers, one of the first displays of AI (artificial intelligence). As CPU clock speed started to increase almost exponentially, particularly in the early 1990's (peep
Moore's Law), chess-playing computers started to rival that of human chess grandmasters (sadly, most simple software chess games created by a 12-year old could whoop me). When IBM developed
Deep Blue, the computer was involved in a six-game match with the #1 ranked chess player in the world,
Gary Kasparov, in 1996. I remember following this event, as it was touted internationally as a battle of human wits against AI, "man vs. machine".
Despite the raw ability of Deep Blue to anazlyze millions upon millions of possible moves per second, he did not prevail against Gary Kasparov, although it was close. However, in a rematch in 1997, Deep Blue won. Since that time, IBM have developed better and faster machines than Deep Blue, some of which have beaten some of the top-ranked players in the world. There is no doubt that as computers become faster (and especially someday when quantum computers are invented), they will eventually be able to beat the best chess players in the world.
Chess is among the greatest of games ever played. To some, it is a great pastime, whereas to others, especially professionals, it is much more than just a game. It involves a high degree of strategy and raw intellectual thought-processing in order to even be considered a novice. If you like to play games that require skill rather than chance or luck, play chess. In fact, I think that it is safe to say that chess is a game that has
no intrinsic element of chance or luck in the determination of the outcome of the game. Whereas chess takes minutes to learn, it takes a
lifetime or more to master. This isn't checkers. This is chess!
P.S. If anybody wants to challenge me to a game of chess, just IM me on AOL Instant Messenger @ WSCG44, and we can play online at Yahoo Games.
