The history of chess, more specifically the history of Western Chess, spans more than 1500 years. The earliest predecessors of the game originated in India in the 6th century AD and spread to Persia from there. Chess play was taken up by the Muslim world when the Arabs conquered Persia, and reached Southern Europe via that route. In Europe, the game of chess evolved into its current form in the 15th century. In the second half of the 19th century, modern tournament chess play began, and the first world chess championship was held in 1886. The first half of the 20th century saw great progress made in chess theory and the establishment of the World Chess Federation.
The first modern chess tournament was held in London in 1851 and won, surprisingly, by German Adolf Anderssen, who was relatively unknown at the time. Anderssen was seen as the leading chess master and his brilliant, energetic attacking chess play style became typical for the time. However, his chess play stlye was later regarded as strategically shallow. Deeper insight into the nature of chess came with two younger players. American Paul Morphy, an extraordinary chess prodigy, won against all important competitors, including Anderssen, during his short chess play career between 1857 and 1863. Morphy’s success stemmed from a combination of brilliant attacks and sound chess play strategy. He instinctively knew how to prepare attacks agaisnst his chess play components. Chess play prodigys like the few mentioned were found all over the world. It is these players that have rounded the game of chess into the art form it is today.
Writings about the theory of how to play chess began to appear in the 15th century. The oldest surviving printed chess book, Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez (Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess) by Spanish churchman Luis Ramirez de Lucena was published in Salamanca in 1497. Lucena and later masters developed elements of chess play openings and started to analyze simple endgames. In the eighteenth century the center of European chess life moved from the Southern European countries to France. The two most important French masters were François-André Danican Philidor, a musician by profession, who discovered the importance of pawns for chess play strategy, and later Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais who won a famous series of matches with the Irish master Alexander McDonnell in 1834. Centers of chess life in this period were coffee houses in big European cities.
While this is only a fraction of vast amounts of documentation available to researchers, this section shows how diverse theories on the origins of chess and chess play have become. Chess play and all of its elements still reign as one of the most thought provoking sports. Chess takes skill, patience concentration and knowledge in order for a player to succeed. The highest ranking of course to become a Chess Master is not an easy task, like many think.