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A Brief History of Chess As we sit down to play chess, probably very few of you, if any at all, reflect on the fact that chess was not always the "packaged game" that it is today. Chess has already undergone many changes over the centuries! Literature often ascribes the game’s origin to a man named Sissa, a Brahman Indian in the court of Rajah Balhait. Sissa called the game chaturanga meaning “army composed of four members”. When Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 b.c., the Indian Army featured the same four components that had already appeared in the game of chaturanga, namely: chariots, foot soldiers, horses, and elephants. These early incarnations of the game (with two-player and four-player variations, each with or without dice) bore little resemblance to the 64-square board of recent times. It was in the Middle Ages, believed during the 15th century, that the rules of chess started to resemble the present configuration. Eventually the castling rule was added to help protect the king from the pieces that were given more power (the queen and bishop); the en passant rule entered the game as an option to evoke a special form of a pawn capture. The game of chess has not evolved since, but even those who are aware of the aforementioned bit of chess history are probably unaware that in the 1920s, World Champion José Raoul Capablanca was seriously considering altering the game. His proposed changes were aimed at making the contests more lively, cutting the average game length in half, and drastically reducing the high frequency of draws that were growing more commonplace among tournament players of the highest caliber. So you see, chess, by definition, is a variant of the game of chaturanga. Many cultures have their own preferred board game, which can trace its origins back to either chataranga or one of its very early offshoots. In essence, what becomes ‘the variant’ or what remains the mainstream game over the course of time is highly subjective and varies from culture to culture. Given that this is the case, there is no harm in at least asking the question: “Is the current configuration of the chessboard This must have been on the mind of the great José Capablanca. With his astonishing tournament record, losing only 26 games in an active career of 29 years, you have to wonder: "Why would he want to change the game?" Capablanca was no doubt thinking about incorporating change for the sake of future generations. He foresaw that draws among the chess elite would become very commonplace, with victory more often going to the younger players with "more energy" to endure long contests. As games continued to become widely disseminated over the passing decades, we have since seen "master play" trickle down to the other classes. The result is that knowledge is more apt to play a role in deciding a winner, rather than ingenuity. Capablanca's 80-Square Board As mentioned earlier, Capablanca felt that chess was suffering from its own popularity. Many games were published and annotated at great length. Those who were already master-caliber players became even more informed regarding the latest issues in opening theory, middle-game strategies, and endgame tactics. The result was that the drawing frequency among the chess elite was sharply on the rise. Capablanca experimented with many different variants of chess, and some of them were wild and obtuse. From April 22 to 24, 1929, Geza Maroczy played Capablanca a two-game match on a board 16 columns wide by 12 rows in height. This game featured two complete sets of pieces sitting side-by-side horizontally. There were, therefore, two kings per each side, both of which had to be checkmated! On this strange taller board, pawns could leap up to four squares on their first move. Capablanca won the first game in 94 moves, and drew the second game in 82 moves. It should be noted that this larger board made the game last longer since it was much harder to win. Players generally prefer a quick game (in terms of number of moves) that has a low occurrence of draws. So, the result of these long games did nothing to convince anyone that this 192-square board should be taken as a serious contender to replace the 64-square setup. So what setup did Capablanca prefer? We have the answer from Edward Lasker's book, The Adventure of Chess (Dover 1959, pp. 38-39). Capa chose an 80-square board where he added two new piece types, called the chancellor and archbishop:
“The pieces he [José Capablanca] added were both about as strong as a queen. As counterparts of the latter, which combined the powers of Rook and bishop, he had a chancellor, moving like a Rook or a knight, and an archbishop, moving like a bishop or a knight.… Capablanca placed the chancellor between the bishop and knight on the king’s wing, and the archbishop on the corresponding square on the queen’s wing, and, of course, added a pawn in front of each….I played many a test game with Capablanca, and they rarely lasted more than twenty or twenty-five moves. We tried boards of 10x10 squares and 10x8 squares, and we concluded that the latter was preferable because hand-to-hand fights start earlier on it.” - Edward Lasker Capablanca’s preferred configuration of the chessboard is shown in Figure 1. A similar 80-square arrangement advocated by the English master Henry Bird fifty years earlier is shown in Figure 2. Undesired Features of the 80-Square Board After a brief inspection of the two boards, one might conclude that Bird’s setup appears to be more logically motivated. For example, Bird has his bishops at the same relative distance from the edges of the board as in regular 8 x 8 chess, while Capablanca has pushed them inward by one file each. The light-squared bishops on d1/g8 and the dark-squared bishops on g1/d8 look out of place in Figure 1, since they are on the opposite colors as their 8 x 8 chess counterparts. More crucially, there is no way to fianchetto bishops on the Capablanca board. Another curiosity on the Capablanca chessboard is the unprotected knight’s pawn on the i-file.
There are some other negative consequences associated with Capablanca’s inward displacement of the bishops. As shown in Figure 3, playing a natural developing move with the king’s knight will hamper the deployment range of your own king’s bishop. Notice how the h-pawn hems in the bishop on the g1 square, allowing it only to move to the left should the king’s pawn be put into play.
Pushing the h-pawn two squares in Capablanca chess, seemingly freeing the king’s bishop, knight, and chancellor, allows a violent attack against h3 and i2 by the enemy archbishop, queen, and bishop, after they line up on the c8-j1 diagonal. White can try to do the equivalent quick kingside castle in Capablanca chess, but there is a positional detriment imposed. After 1. h4 d6 2. Nh3 e5 3. Bi3 (protecting the h-pawn since the Black bishop on d8 is now attacking it) 3...Nh6 4. Ch2 looks to allow 5. 0-0 without breaking a sweat. See Figure 4 where Black to move has 4...Nj5, attacking the h-pawn twice and the bishop on i3, detracting from the merit of the position for White. After 4...Nj5 and 5...Nxi3, White’s structure is ruined on the kingside as 6.jxi3 is needed to recapture the knight that removed White’s bishop. From this subset of undesired positions can spring forth many others. One of the more entertaining exploitations of the weakened i-pawn is now known as Trice’s Mate in Capablanca chess. It has the same deserving stature as the Scholar’s Mate in contemporary chess, but it is still worthy of print. Trice’s Mate involves a direct assault on i7 from the start. If not met properly, a sacrifice of the chancellor and queen is crowned with an unexpected solo-checkmate with the archbishop on move 6.
A small group of players from Philadelphia were experimenting with 80-square variants, attempting to rediscover Capablanca’s chess. The game Ed Trice vs. Joel Gehen, October 13, 1998, is the source of the positions shown above. It should be noted that 1.d3 was being played instead of the more “chess-like” 1.d4, since flank checks of the king are possible. The g8-bishop can reach c4 and deliver check if both d4 and e4 are pushed. The Black archbishop can likewise inflict a check via a pawn push to b6, then sliding to a6. Throughout our course of rediscovering Capablanca’s chess, some uncomfortable arrangements for the player with the White pieces would result if pushing to d4 without preparation. After 1.d3 Black must react to the archbishop’s hit on the weak i7, and 1...Nh6 supplies adequate interference. The follow-up with 2.Ci3 cannot be recommended, since the chancellor can be antagonized with a mere push of the e-pawn to reveal the Black bishop on d8. Black’s 2...Cg6 adds another layer of protection to i7 via the chancellor holding this square with its knight aura, but assigning a major piece such a task is not the best way to proceed. With 3. Qd2 White compounds the attack on i7 with an x-ray threat, and 3...f5 does not look out of the ordinary. But here, White has the shocking 4.Cxi7?!, which does not lead to a forced mate, but just about everyone falls for the resulting trap once.
From Figure 7, Black will recapture White’s chancellor with 4. … Cxi7. The purpose of White’s “sacrifice” of the chancellor was to undermine the blatant weaknesses in the vicinity of i7, and set up a solo checkmate with the archbishop if Black continues to react the way that a “regular chess” player would. White adds fuel to the fire with the surprising 5.Qxh6, seemingly sacrificing the queen after having already parted with a chancellor. Black appears to be in a quandary, with the chancellor and Rook in a skewer of sorts by the queen and archbishop aligned along the same diagonal. The way out is through simplification: 5…Ci8 6. Qxj8 Cxj8 7. Axj8 Qi4! 8. Ag5 Qxi2 9. Ah3 Qi6! and Black wins.
The game featured the miscue 5...gxh6?? taking the queen but walking into the solo-checkmate of the archbishop, 6.Axh6 mate, as shown in Figure 9. The archbishop delivers check as would a bishop while also denying the Black king access to f7. The knight component of the archbishop secures the checkmate. This game demonstrated a radical exploitation of the weak i7-pawn. There are countless other less extreme ways to undermine this weakness that are built into the fabric of Capablanca’s chess. This raises an interesting question. Why would a talent like Capablanca choose this particular configuration for his 80-square version of chess?
It turns out that Capablanca may have been merely correcting an unpleasant feature of Bird’s board when he subsequently proposed his setup. From Figure 1, if you switch the locations of the bishop and archbishop on the queenside, and chancellor and bishop on the kingside, you would have Bird’s proposed 80-square board in Figure 2.
At first glance Bird’s configuration looks to be more logical, but the h-pawn is undefended in this scenario. Notice that the h-pawn is a knight’s move away from the king. Bird’s chancellor could make a leap on the first move, 1. Ch3, which would threaten the smothered mate next, 2. Cxh7#, if the h-pawn was not defended immediately. It would be hard to imagine new players avoiding 1.Ch3 knowing that this Fool’s Mate exists. As such, Bird’s configuration had the potential to stifle opening creativity, rather than expound upon it. So, Capablanca improved upon Bird’s idea, but with a superficial treatment of the starting configuration, a more subtle, lasting imbalance was left in place as a result. The weak i-pawn could be exploited, especially by the fact that three diagonal piece vectors are all aiming in its vicinity (archbishop on c1, bishop on d1, queen on e1) from Capablanca’s starting position. From the examples shown, we can see that an exciting variation on the game of chess awaits, if it is possible to cure some of the anomalies on the wider board with the new pieces. It turns out that with a minor correction to the Capablanca setup, the result is an 80-square version of the game that is balanced, harmonious, and contains many themes and tabias already familiar to the modern chess player. Modifying Capablanca's Setup: The Birth of Gothic Chess
The contemporary 8x8 chess setup is shown in Figure 12, with a 10x8 chess variant called Gothic chess shown in Figure 13. The pieces from left to right at the bottom of the Gothic-chess board are: Rook, knight, bishop, queen, chancellor, king, archbishop, bishop, knight, Rook. As shown above, by separating the king and queen, it is possible to defend all of the pawns in the starting configuration without perturbing the rest of the relationships between the chess pieces. Gothic chess is similar enough to chess that players of all chess strengths can adapt to it very quickly. The first Gothic-chess game ever played in July 2000 featured the moves: 1. Nh3 d5 2. i3 Nh6 3. Bi2 Nc6 4. e3 Af6 5. Nc3 e5 6. Ne2 Be6 7. Ng3 g6 8. Ae2 Qd7 9. 0-0 Cd6 10. b3 0-0-0 11. Ba3 Ce8 leading to the position shown in Figure 14.
This position contains a king’s
Indian formation for White that is easy to identify. Black has castled
to the opposite side of the board, which inevitably leads to wars being
waged on opposing flanks. The game continued as follows: 12. Bb2 Bg7 13. Ad3 Ci8 14. Ac5 Qe8 15. d4 e4 16. Qe2 Bf8 17. Aa4 i5 18. c4 i4 19. cxd5!? ixh3 20. dxc6 hxi2 21. cxb7+ Kxb7?! 22. Axe8! ixh1=Q+ 23. Cxh1 Rxe8 24. Qb5+ Ka8 25. Qc6+ Kb8 26. Qb5+ Kc8 27. d5! Bd7?? 28. Qa6+ Kb8 29. Bxf6 j5 30. Bd4 c5 31. dxc6 e.p. Bxc6 32. Qxa7+ Kc8 33. Cc1 Re6 34. Bb6 1-0 which was an exciting fight every step of the way.
Gothic Chess Miniatures Even seasoned chess veterans get trapped in surprising ways on the Gothic Chess board. As Grandmaster GM Georgi Kacheishvilli expressed to me at the Marshall Chess Club a few years ago: "The new pieces do not just make the board wider. It adds a whole new dimension to the play of the game." By this he meant that the play is not just 'more tactical', as you might initially expect. The presence of the new pieces complicate the tactical array of exchanges to the point that you almost have to treat some of these notions strategically. For example, in chess we know that two Rooks can overpower a queen, and you should not trade a bishop and knight for a Rook and a pawn. Also, you can trade a queen for three minor pieces in regular 8x8 chess. In Gothic Chess, should you trade a queen for an archbishop and knight? If you think about, the archbishop and knight are three minor pieces on just two squares, so they are stronger than three minors on three squares. So, the archbishop and knight should be stronger than a queen. But on the rectangular 10x8 board, knights are about 16% weaker than on the 8x8 board. So the concept of trading the queen for an archbishop and knight is often decided strategically by tailoring the subsequent play to suit your material distribution. The side with the queen strives for an open game, thinning out the pawn population. The side with the archbishop and knight aims for a closed game with the pawns remaining on the board. This would allow the archbishop and knight to dance in and out of the pawns, picking off your remaining forces by harvesting the unusual combative powers that the duo possesses. That exchange scenario is just the tip of the iceberg. Since a chancellor is a Rook and knight combined, how much weaker is it than a queen? Is a queen worth a chancellor and a pawn? Is an archbishop and a pawn worth a chancellor? Is a Rook and two pawns worth an archbishop? Which is better to have, a chancellor and bishop or a Rook and archbishop? If you are heading for an archbishop vs. Rook ending, what type of pawn structure favors your side? The vast unknown domain of strategy in Gothic Chess is equally as expansive as the ocean of tactical possibilities. But it is the blend of those powerful tactical Gothic bombshells with subtle, yet profound strategic complexity, that can yield surprising miniatures that are non-existent in the game of regular chess. Consider this extremely brief miniature game: 1. d4 f5 2. Nh3 See the diagram below on the left:
This does not appear out of the ordinary at all. Each player has pushed a pawn, not too unlike how a Dutch Defense would start in regular chess, and White has deployed his kingside knight. From this embryonic beginning, Black is already denied the "natural" French-like 2...e6 which would be a blunder here! As the top right diagram shows, 2…e6?? 3. Bg5! And White has the Black queen in severe jeopardy. The only way to save the queen is by interposing either the archbishop or chancellor. White will win a major piece for the bishop, and Black can resign here with dignity. After being so stung, a player with the Black pieces might begin his next game too passively.
1. d4 h6 See the diagram above on the left. In an effort to stop Bg5 at any cost, Black pushes the h-pawn very early. There is nothing wrong with such a move, but it does give White a "sneaky opportunity." 2. Nh3 Nc6 See the right diagram above. Again, nothing too out of the ordinary. The Black knight on c6 applies some pressure on the d4 pawn, and if White chases the knight with a "queenside Alekhine" such as 2. d5 Ne5 3. f4 Black has the haven of 3…Ng6. Instead, White elects to make it seem as if he is adding protection to the d-pawn with the chancellor with 3. Cf3?! In almost all cases Black will react immediately with 3…d5 aiming to deploy the light bishop to g4, harassing the chancellor. This is where White uncorks a surprise with the highly dubious 4. Nf4?! and Black almost always plays 4…Bg4?? immediately.
Imagine the shock of
5. Ng6# when Black realises the pawn can't capture the knight since the
chancellor in the f-file exudes the Rook's power. There
is no equivalent miniature that is possible in the game of chess! See more Gothic Chess Miniatures
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