A Short History of Chess by Henry A. Davidson

Author:Henry A. Davidson [Davidson, Henry A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-307-82829-3
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2012-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

Inspection of this table reveals several interesting items. First, notice the sizes of the board. Without exception they represent enlargements. This indeed has been the trend in chess—toward more complex play, never toward simpler play. And this incidentally furnishes one reason for doubting historical claims which assume that chess was once more complicated and has since become simpler.‡ Notice, too, that the extra baseline squares were occupied by new pieces, most of them with added powers. The favorite new piece is a combination of rook and knight, marked d in the table. Such a piece under various names (guard, champion, chancellor, concubine, and marshall) has been offered off and on for some centuries. The reason for the popularity of this combination is suggested by Foster: “The queen has the power of the bishop and the rook, and another piece having the power of a knight and a rook was needed to equalize the force on the king’s side.”

The reason does not seem very cogent. Changing from an eight-cell base line to a nine-cell line hardly seems in the interest of symmetry. And the bishops and rooks are the balancing pieces, since one moves on rectangular lines, the other on diagonal lines. Together they cover all lines of radiation from any square on the board. Merging the bishop’s move and the rook’s move into the powers of a single piece (the queen) makes for perfect symmetry. It is the knight which is out of place, if an inventor has an unrequited passion for symmetry. The knight’s move is “peculiar” in that it is not balanced by any parallel move in any other piece. If an innovator creates a new piece to consolidate the powers of the knight and rook, surely symmetry demands still another to merge the moves of knight and bishop. This could go on indefinitely.

Suggestions for “improvement” have been made in all centuries since the game invaded Europe. For an account of twentieth century suggestions and an analysis of their fate, the reader is referred to Chapter 16.

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