Long live the queen | thearticle

As we look back in gratitude to the Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I turn my attention to the Queen in chess and her antecedents. When the original version of Muslim chess,

Shatranj, underwent its Renaissance transformation, around 1475, the main change was in the powers of the Queen. Formerly known as the Vizier, or Prime Minister, the new Queen advanced from

being a waddling cripple , permitted only a one square diagonal move in each direction, to the most powerful unit on the board, capable even of delivering checkmate in just two moves.

Admittedly this was only possible against dismally weak opening play by White, namely 1 f4 e6 2 g4 Qh4 checkmate. Nevertheless, when compared with the old style chess, where any form of

initial contact took around ten moves, this rapid denouement astounded and impressed the chess enthusiasts of the day.  It has variously been speculated that the new powers of the Queen owed

something to the example of powerful late 16th-century female rulers, such as Queen Elizabeth I of England, Marie de Medici in France, or Margaret of Parma, Vice Regent of the Spanish

Netherlands on behalf of her brother, Philip II. Sadly this attractively romantic fable does not hold up, since the dates do not fit. The new chess was well established long before the times

of these celebrated female potentates. Far more likely is it that the new Queen represented the introduction of distance weapons on the battlefield, such as the great cannon of the

Hungarian engineer Urban, famously used by Sultan Mehmet the Victorious to demolish the ramparts of Constantinople in 1453. If chess is a game representing real warfare, then such a game,

lacking a piece possessed of long distance firepower, would have seemed hopelessly outdated. Hence the need for a piece with the vast powers conferred on the new style of Queen. 

Traditionally, historical opinion has located the origins of chess in Northern India around the year AD 600. H.J.R.Murray’s monumental survey of the sources ( _ A History of Chess, _ Oxford

University Press, 1913) argues that the manuscript references dating from the early 7th century refer to chess as _ chaturanga _ , a term meaning “divided into four”, which was also, as

Murray pointed out, the “regular epic name for the army at an early date in Sanskrit”. The fourfold division of the Indian army into elephants, chariots, cavalry and infantry can be dated as

early as the fourth century BC according to Murray. In his social history, _ Chess: The History of a Game _ , Richard Eales, while endorsing Murray’s basic premise on the origins of chess,

also emphasises the fact that before AD 800 “documentary evidence shrinks to a few ambiguous fragments”. What is certain is that from India the game swept outwards to both East and West. By

AD 800 the Chinese version, in which a central river divides the two forces, was already in existence. Through Korea the game reached Japan, where it is still played under the guise of

Shogi, where captured pieces, like mercenaries, change sides. In the West the game travelled through Persia to the Arabic world. The earliest European references indicate that chess was

known in western and central Europe by the beginning of the 11th century. In this initial phase, it was during the caliphate of Baghdad and the Abbasid dynasty that the game truly

flourished. The city of Baghdad, founded in AD 762 by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur, was once the world capital of chess. In the ninth and tenth centuries AD Baghdad was to _ Shatranj _ (the

old Arabic form of chess) what Moscow used to be to the modern game. Baghdad was the epicentre of the Muslim Golden Age of science and wisdom, a cultured flourishing metropolis, packed with

grandmasters and chess theoreticians who had produced volume after volume of critical positions and opening theory. Is it possible that a colony of grandmasters could have arisen in

isolation without a widespread and lengthy tradition of chess playing, perhaps in rural areas, a kind of epic, local but widespread chess tradition? However, surely the sophistication of

chess knowledge displayed in Baghdad indicates that the ancestry of chess is, in fact, considerably more ancient than the earliest Indian references of the seventh century. The question

arises especially since grandmasters were prevalent in Baghdad not long after the foundation of the city.   The most renowned grandmaster in Baghdad was as-Suli (c.AD 880-946). Just like the

recent world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, he came from an area bordering the Caspian Sea and also, like Kasparov, he travelled from a far-flung outpost of empire to seek his fortune in a

capital city. In Baghdad, as-Suli became the chess favourite of caliph al-Muktafi. In AD 940 as-Suli made an indiscreet comment and had to flee Baghdad. He later died in poverty in Basra.

  The following study demonstrates as-Suli ’ s remarkable genius. The position occurs in a chess manuscript written in AD 1140, which was found in a library in Constantinople (now

Istanbul). Tragically, much of the wealth of chess lore accumulated in Baghdad itself would have been destroyed when Genghis Khan ’ s grandson, Hulagu, annihilated that mighty centre of

learning and civilisation in 1258 AD.  It is a puzzle cited by as-Suli, who said of it “this is very old, yet neither al-Adli (a previous chess genius) nor anyone else has said whether it is

drawn or can be won. Nor has any one interpreted it … because of its difficulty. There is no one on earth who has solved it unless he was taught it by me.”   As-Suli did not supply a

solution and in a sense this was a challenge to the world, as with Fermat ’ s Last Theorem, which no one had succeeded in cracking for a millennium. The variations that I now demonstrate

were reconstructed by Grandmaster Yuri Averbakh and, bar a few later computer finesses, constitute the only satisfactory solution to the as-Suli Two Queens puzzle. Remember that in the

ancient version of chess, the queens could only move one square diagonally in any direction, and capturing your opponent ’ s last piece counted as victory, even if an actual checkmate was no

longer possible.  If it is White ’ s move in this position he wins very quickly, as follows: 1. Ka2 Kd3 (Black ’ s defence is always a counter-attack against the white queen whenever the

white king sets off to hunt down the black queen) 2. Qb4 Kc4 3. Qa3 and White wins, since Black ’ s queen is cornered, while White ’ s queen is immune. However, in the diagram, it is Black ’

s move, and it is this factor which causes the extreme difficulty of the solution. 1… KD5  (if 1… Kd3 then 2. Qb4 and 3. Ka2 will win. If Black plays any other move at the start then 2. Ka2

wins at once)  2. KB4 KD6 3. KC4  (not 3. Qd2 Ke5 4. Kc3 Ke4 5. Kc2 Kf3 6. Kb1 Ke2 7. Qc1 Kd1)  3… KE6  (plausible, but incorrect would be 3… Ke5 4. Qb4 Kd6 5. Kc3 Kc6 6. Kb3 Kb5 7. Qc3 Ke5

8. Kc2 Kc4 9. Qd2 and White wins since he will quickly trap the black queen with his own king, while the black king cannot make contact with the white queen)  4. KD4  (if 4. Qb4 Black

defends with 4… Kd7!! 5. Kb3 Kc6 6. Ka2 Kb5 or if 6. Kc3 Kd6 also with a draw. Black is defending by using the method of corresponding squares, generally regarded as a modern invention. The

point is, for example, that if White ’ s king is on b3 Black ’ s should be on c6, or if White ’ s king is on c3, Black ’ s should be on d6)  4… KF6 5. KD5 KF7 6. KE5 KG7 7. KE6 KG8 8. KF6

KH8 The black king has been forced to h8, the furthest extremity of the board. By playing 9. Kg6 White wins the battle for the corresponding squares. For Black, the chessboard has become too

small. The square that corresponds to g6 is i9, but it does not exist on the chessboard.   9. KG6 KG8 10. QD2 KF8  (if Black plays 10… Qb2 to free his queen from its prison on a1 then the

white queen on d2 is well out of range of the Black king on f8)  11. QC1 KE7 12. KF5 KD6 13. KE4 KC5 14. KD3 KB4  black queen is lost. The solution to this endgame study is amazing. Both

kings run from one corner to the other and then back again. It is a creation of genius. Is there any modern endgame study which contains such an advanced idea?  The appalling complexity and

filigree subtlety of this wonderful endgame which as-Suli solved in the early tenth century make it difficult for me to believe that the game of chess was invented as late as AD 600. As-Suli

himself calls this a very old problem and mentions that al-Adli, who died some 30-40 years before as-Suli ’ s birth, was already aware of it, yet unable to solve it. Could such

sophistication in a game, given the limitation of civilised life at that time, especially the lack of printing, have arisen so quickly? Our knowledge about the origins of chess is limited,

as Eales emphasised, by the lack of documentary evidence. _ TheArticle _ is now the appropriate forum in which to appeal to Arabic and other scholars to search archives across the world –

for example In Cairo, where there may be much untapped original material – for manuscript sources which can illuminate the dark age of the early history of chess. We close with some

illumination from more modern history. Modern chess, in fact, must have received a tremendous boost from the sheer absence of competing information about Shatranj, a direct result of Hulagu

’ s Armageddon in Baghdad.     Thematically, we start with  an ironic disaster from Yuri Averbakh  himself. The  _ Fons et Origo _ _   _ of the as-Suli two queens solution, falls victim to

one of the most celebrated queen sacrifices of all time!   In the next, from a previous century,  Adolf Anderssen’s ‘The Evergreen”  demonstrates his fondness for delivering checkmate with a

bishop on e7.   Returning to the twentieth century, the then world champion  Tigran V. Petrosian executes a devastating intervention  with the white Queen against the leading theoretician

Ludek Pachman, followed by a repeat performance with black Queen ( Filip v Petrosian, Erevan 1965).     Another world champion, the great  Mikhail Tal overwhelms the   top Hungarian

grandmaster Lajos Portisch,  in a game where the White queen ’ s influence is felt over the entire board. Finally, we conclude by returning to the nineteenth century for  Adolf Anderssen‘s

Immortal Game’  featuring a stunning queen sacrifice, again with Be7 being the coup de grace.  _ Raymond Keene’s latest book “Fifty Shades of Ray: Chess in the year of the Coronavirus”,

containing some of his best pieces from TheArticle, is now available from  _ Blackwell’s _ . _ A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every

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