Scott Bruce, age 12, of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, for his question:
WHO INVENTED THE GAME OF CHESS?
Many chess champions have become skilled players at very early ,2/// ages. A man named Samuel Reshevsky, for example, was a chess master at the age of eight. He came to the United States from Poland in 1920 and went on to win the U.S. championship six times. An American champion named Bobby Fischer of New York City won the United States title in 1958 when he was only 14.
One of the world's most popular games of skill and imagination is chess. It is played by two persons using a set of pieces, or men, on a board marked with squares.
Chess resembles war in that it is made up of attack and defense, and has as its object making the king surrender. The moves in the game have often been compared with those made by two opposing generals on a battlefield.
We don't know exactly who invented chess, but we know it was first played in Asia. The term chess comes from the Persian word shah, meaning king.
Some scholars say chess was actually invented in India and then spread to Persia, which is now Iran. This all happened about A.D. 500. The scholars point out the likeness between modern chess and an Indian game called chaturanga. Chaturanga is still played in India and Iran under the name of shatranj.
The Arabs learned to play the game of skill when they conquered Persia in the 600s and then they took it with them to Spain. From there it spread throughout Europe.
Chess' modern era goes back to about 1500 when the moves of the game took their present form. Some of the early explorers reaching South America during the 1500s were excellent chess players.
Benjamin Franklin made chess popular in the United States during the Revolutionary days.
The United States chess championship was held by a man named Paul Morphy from 1857 until 1871. A first international tournament took place in London in 1851 but the official title of World Champion was not used until 1866 when an Austrian named William Steinitz defeated a German chess player named Adolf Anderssen.
Henry Nelson Pillsbury, the United States champion from 1897 until 1906, regularly played 12 to 16 games at once while blindfolded.
Playing chess while being blindfolded seems to be one of the ways masters of the game can show their skill. A Russian world champion named Alexander Alekhine in 1933 played 32 games at once while blindfolded.
Greatest master of blindfold chess was Belgian born George Koltanowski. In 1937 he played blindfolded against 34 opponents and won 24 games, drew 10 and lost only nine in 13 and a half hours. In 1951 he played 50 opponents at one time and won 43 games, drew five and lost only two.