International Chess Day
July 20, 2017
The International Chess Day is celebrated all over the world every year on July 20. The day was founded by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) and was proposed by UNESCO.
Invented in India in the 5th century AD and is likely one of the oldest games of our era. It was known as Chaturanga, which means four divisions (of the military) infantry, cavalry, elephantry and chariotry which represented by the pieces that would have developed into the modern PAWN, KNIGHT, BISHOP and ROOK respectively. Chess was primarily used as a tool for military strategy, mathematics, gambling and even astronomy in India and other parts of the world.
From India chaturanga spread to Persia and they called it as chatrang. When the Arabs conquered Persia, the Muslim world named it as shatranj. Around tenth century it entered Europe.
Chess is a two-player board game played on a Chess Board contains 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight (8 x 8) grid. It is played by two players with 32 pieces i.e. each player plays the game with 16 pieces; one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops and eight pawns. 16 white and 16 black pieces are placed on the board. The goal of the game is to ‘checkmate’ the opponent’s king with inevitable capture.
Image Credit: www.thechessstore.com
