by Robert John McCrary
The following article, slightly re-worded, appeared in the April 1984 issue of the SCCA NEWS, published by the South Carolina Chess Association. It is reprinted with the permission of the state officers.
Happy birthday, modern chess! At least, that is what we should be saying, since it was about 500 years ago that the queen and bishop took their modern moves, thus creating the modern game. Although the other pieces had taken on their modern moves centuries before, the queen and bishop had been weak pieces that slowed the pace and reduced the tactics of the game.
In medieval chess the queen moved only one square diagonally, so it could reach only 32 squares at a slow pace. The medieval chess bishop could leap over pieces like a knight, and like the knight moved exactly two steps; but unlike the knight, it moved its two steps diagonally. Thus, a bishop on the c1 square could move only to e3 or a3, although it could leap an intervening man on d2 or b2. The bishop was thus a weak piece that could reach only 8 squares of the board in a game; it was considered to be roughly equivalent to the pawn in value.
In the late 15th century, the queen suddenly gained a huge increase in power, as it was given its modern far-ranging move. The bishop trebled in power by receiving its modern move, thereby becoming the rough equal of the knight. Both these changes occurred at the same time, so that a dynamic new Renaissance chess emerged as a rival to the traditional medieval game.
Unfortunately, the name of the inventor(s) has been lost. (We can assume that the changes resulted from a single invention because of the abrupt and simultaneous appearance of the two new moves.) However, through inference we can perhaps reconstruct some of the features of how that great invention occurred.
First, we know that the invention probably happened in Italy, France, or Spain, around 1475-1485. Modern chess was thus a product of the same historical period that produced the printing press and the discovery of America. It was an exciting time in which the medieval dogmas of the centuries were being examined by fresh eyes by a society feeling the power of new discovery and invention.
Our inventor(s) conceived a simple idea: as the rook could move along open orthogonal lines, why not have an analogous piece that ranged along diagonal lines? Then, for the sake of further logical balance, why not a very powerful piece that moved along any line, whether orthogonal or diagonal?
The diagonal-mover had already been tried as the " courier" in Courier chess, a German chess variant that had thrived in late medieval times. Our inventor(s) may or may not have known that. The more powerful piece, however, was stronger than any piece ever tried in any known chess variant before that time.
Then, our inventor(s) had a further inspiration: why not replace the weakest existing pieces with the new ones, thus allowing the new game to be played on old sets? This seems so logical that it is hard to believe that all previous known chess variants, including Courier Chess, had added new places without replacing the old; thus , they enlarged the game, requiring new equipment to try it. By allowing the new game to be played on old sets, the rapidity of the new game's spread was accentuated. One wonders if the inventor(s) was just being practical, wanting to try out the new ideas without having to construct a new set. In any event, it was easy to identify the queen and the bishop as the weakest pieces in the old game. The queen, being the a solitary piece in the set, was the obvious choice for the new powerful piece. Thus, the bishops became the logical choice to receive the new long-range diagonal moves.
The inventor(s) now noticed a small problem: the new queen would now be much stronger than the king. No doubt the inventor(s), excited with the new moves, conceded that quirk as a practical necessity to keep the king as the piece to be checkmated. Some psychoanalysts have seen the queen's superior power as filled with Oedipal significance, but it was more likely to have been simple pragmatism to accommodate the new moves of the pieces within the existing chess sets and established nomenclature. Perhaps a change in the queen's name was considered, (in early medieval times that piece had been the king's male advisor rather than a queen), but one assumes that the inventor(s) was a simple chess player who could care less about the names of the pieces as long as they moved better! Perhaps, the inventor(s) was female, who saw no need for re-naming the newly-powerful queen!
How did the new game spread? Probably by word-of-mouth through the commercial contacts that had developed in Europe. If the inventor(s) had published anything, his (her, their) name(s) would more probably have been preserved. Still, one wonders why the inventor(s) did not come forward when the new chess first appeared in literature before the end of the century, with no credit to the inventor(s); perhaps he (she, they) was already dead.
Since that time, there have been a number of attempts to add even stronger pieces by combining existing pieces. For example, in 1617 a Sicilian-born chess writer named Carrera created a variant with pieces that combined the moves of rook and knight, and of bishop and knight, on a board of 10x8 squares. (Interestingly, Capablanca essentially re-invented that game about three centuries later.) Philidor sometimes played a chess variant that had a rook-knight piece and a rook-king piece. Russian commoners of the 1700's were seen playing with an overwhelmingly strong piece combining queen and knight, and some Turkish players used the queen-knight piece, a rook-knight piece, and a bishop-knight piece.
All such innovations have failed to gain acceptance, perhaps because they disturb the balance of weak and strong pieces, or enlarge the game too much; or simply because they require new equipment that may not be widely available.
After the queen's and bishop's rebirth, all that remained was the hammering out of less fundamental rules. For example, stalemate was not considered a draw in England before the early 1800's; before then, the stalemating player lost the game! (A 1745 book by Philip Stamma has a problem that contains a position in which a player " wins" by self-stalemating.)
Similarly, the pawn-promotion rule had some bugs: Philidor played that the pawn could be promoted only to a previously captured piece. The 50-move draw evolved during the 1800's, and the three-fold repetition started around 1883. Italian players continued to use a different kind of castling move until the latter 1800's.
All honor to the inventor(s) of our modern game, who have brought pleasure to millions. Let us hope the next significant invention in chess preserves the name of its inventor!
