[primus202]

I read "It's All a Game" by Tristan Donovan and the chapter on chess was definitely one of the most fascinating. There are so many little bits of human history frozen in amber by the rules.

I had no idea the game had middle eastern origins for instance. The rooks used to be war elephants hence how they "charge" across the board in straight lines (they were adapted into rooks as the game was Europeanized). Also the reason you never capture the king, which used to be the shah, and resign instead is because killing a rival shah was a big no-no!

So many interesting tidbits in that book. Highly recommend.

[lllllll0]

> I had no idea the game had middle eastern origins for instance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chess#Origin

Chess originated in India, not the Middle East.

[capableweb]

Seems like the precursors might have originated from India but what would evolve into what we today call "Chess" seems to have been taking shape in Persia (Iran).

[renewiltord]

Do the historians who track these things have some metric that they determine that separates 'precursors' from the game itself or is it a human "you know it when you see it" or consensus? Just curious. I imagine it's something similar to how we answer the question "Are these distinct species?" (which doesn't really have a great answer).

[satchlj]

Thanks for the recommendation - I will check it out.

In "Do Dice Play God", another great book, I learned that the earliest dice (probably used initially for diving the future and only later for gambling) had rectangular sides instead of square ones.

I wonder if (a) that was because their creators didn't understand even the very basics of probability, or (b) if the idea of fairness and each number being rolled with equal frequency just wasn't important to them. Not sure.

[thehappypm]

A rectangular die would basically only have 4 sides, still very useful for rolls. Landing on the square side would be like a coin landing on its edge: possible but would be a re-throw.

[simonh]

It may be they were mimicking the shape of knuckle bones.

[anthk]

In Spanish some piece names are different.

Rook = tower. Knight = horse. Bishop = alfil, maybe from Arabic for "elephant".

[alternatetwo]

For us Germans it's the same, except the bishop is called "runner" or "sprinter", and the knight also "jumper" or maybe "leaper".

[satchlj]

Just bought "It's All a Game" - looking forward to reading it!