Chess

Everybody has heard, at least once, of one of the most famous games of all ages: the Chess. And mostly everyone knows it’s rules, they’re pretty simple in fact, which makes it a game easy to play.

But not many people know about it’s origins, and that’s what I’d like to put some light upon today!

The roots where he modern Chess game is sustained are found within the Indian territory around the 6th century. Around those dates, the first comertial routes where opened, and with the help of the military power of Persia, and a couple of conquests, the game reached the pharaonic Egypt.

There’s a big event from that time concerning the Chess game: the ambassador from Persia taught the egypts the game, and it became so famous it even reached the pharaon, which granted the persian any desire he wanted. Seeming gentle and humble, he asked for a grain of rice for the first square of the game, two grains for the second, four grains for the third, and so on till he reached the 63 squares. The pharaon, unknowing the hidden maths of the wish, granted it to the ambassador, and huge was his surprise, when his councelor came the following day, begging for his pardon, and telling him that not only there wasn’t enough rice in Egypt, but not even the world had this much.

In fact, if you try to calculate it, the result is 2^64 – 1 , which is like… 3.000.000.000.000 tones of rice!! An easy way to imagine this: if you could take eeeevery chineese person in the world and give each one a thousand tones of rice, you’d just get to a third part of what you need to accomplish… imagine!!

of course, the game rules were much different back then, in fact, the modern chess, the one we’ve always played at, dates from the XVIII century! barely a hundred years before the first world tournament (which was held in 1886, in the USA, confronting Johann Zukertort and Wilhelm Steinitz)

And this is it! See you for the next round! 😉