1
00:00:07,230 --> 00:00:10,820
The attacking infantry advances steadily,

2
00:00:10,820 --> 00:00:14,980
their elephants already having 
broken the defensive line.

3
00:00:14,980 --> 00:00:19,990
The king tries to retreat, but enemy 
cavalry flanks him from the rear.

4
00:00:19,990 --> 00:00:23,010
Escape is impossible.

5
00:00:23,010 --> 00:00:25,200
But this isn’t a real war–

6
00:00:25,200 --> 00:00:27,250
nor is it just a game.

7
00:00:27,250 --> 00:00:32,000
Over the roughly one-and-a-half millennia 
of its existence,

8
00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:35,897
chess has been known as a tool 
of military strategy,

9
00:00:35,897 --> 00:00:41,497
a metaphor for human affairs, 
and a benchmark of genius.

10
00:00:41,497 --> 00:00:45,376
While our earliest records of chess 
are in the 7th century,

11
00:00:45,376 --> 00:00:50,076
legend tells that the game’s origins 
lie a century earlier.

12
00:00:50,076 --> 00:00:55,696
Supposedly, when the youngest prince 
of the Gupta Empire was killed in battle,

13
00:00:55,696 --> 00:01:00,622
his brother devised a way of representing
the scene to their grieving mother.

14
00:01:00,622 --> 00:01:06,801
Set on the 8x8 ashtapada board used for
other popular pastimes,

15
00:01:06,801 --> 00:01:10,894
a new game emerged with two key features:

16
00:01:10,894 --> 00:01:14,319
different rules for moving 
different types of pieces,

17
00:01:14,319 --> 00:01:19,179
and a single king piece whose fate 
determined the outcome.

18
00:01:19,179 --> 00:01:23,283
The game was originally 
known as chaturanga–

19
00:01:23,283 --> 00:01:26,344
a Sanskrit word for ‘four divisions.’

20
00:01:26,344 --> 00:01:28,894
But with its spread to Sassanid Persia,

21
00:01:28,894 --> 00:01:31,774
it acquired its current name 
and terminology–

22
00:01:31,774 --> 00:01:38,804
“chess,” derived from ‘shah,' meaning 
king, and “checkmate” from ‘shah mat,’

23
00:01:38,804 --> 00:01:41,744
or “the king is helpless.”

24
00:01:41,744 --> 00:01:45,534
After the 7th century Islamic conquest 
of Persia,

25
00:01:45,534 --> 00:01:48,184
chess was introduced to the Arab world.

26
00:01:48,184 --> 00:01:51,304
Transcending its role as a 
tactical simulation,

27
00:01:51,304 --> 00:01:54,984
it eventually became a rich source 
of poetic imagery.

28
00:01:54,984 --> 00:02:00,154
Diplomats and courtiers used chess terms 
to describe political power.

29
00:02:00,154 --> 00:02:03,765
Ruling caliphs became avid 
players themselves.

30
00:02:03,765 --> 00:02:09,115
And historian al-Mas’udi considered the 
game a testament to human free will

31
00:02:09,115 --> 00:02:11,679
compared to games of chance.

32
00:02:11,679 --> 00:02:17,289
Medieval trade along the Silk Road carried
the game to East and Southeast Asia,

33
00:02:17,289 --> 00:02:20,316
where many local variants developed.

34
00:02:20,316 --> 00:02:24,776
In China, chess pieces were placed at 
intersections of board squares

35
00:02:24,776 --> 00:02:29,496
rather than inside them, as in the native 
strategy game Go.

36
00:02:29,496 --> 00:02:34,408
The reign of Mongol leader Tamerlane saw 
an 11x10 board

37
00:02:34,408 --> 00:02:37,428
with safe squares called citadels.

38
00:02:37,428 --> 00:02:43,188
And in Japanese shogi, captured pieces 
could be used by the opposing player.

39
00:02:43,188 --> 00:02:47,518
But it was in Europe that chess began to 
take on its modern form.

40
00:02:47,518 --> 00:02:52,512
By 1000 AD, the game had become part 
of courtly education.

41
00:02:52,512 --> 00:02:54,762
Chess was used as an allegory

42
00:02:54,762 --> 00:02:58,572
for different social classes performing 
their proper roles,

43
00:02:58,572 --> 00:03:02,439
and the pieces were re-interpreted 
in their new context.

44
00:03:02,439 --> 00:03:06,949
At the same time, the Church remained 
suspicious of games.

45
00:03:06,949 --> 00:03:10,713
Moralists cautioned against devoting 
too much time to them,

46
00:03:10,713 --> 00:03:14,643
with chess even being briefly 
banned in France.

47
00:03:14,643 --> 00:03:16,673
Yet the game proliferated,

48
00:03:16,673 --> 00:03:21,603
and the 15th century saw it cohering into
the form we know today.

49
00:03:21,603 --> 00:03:27,195
The relatively weak piece of advisor was 
recast as the more powerful queen–

50
00:03:27,195 --> 00:03:31,952
perhaps inspired by the recent surge 
of strong female leaders.

51
00:03:31,952 --> 00:03:34,723
This change accelerated the game’s pace,

52
00:03:34,723 --> 00:03:36,953
and as other rules were popularized,

53
00:03:36,953 --> 00:03:41,663
treatises analyzing common openings 
and endgames appeared.

54
00:03:41,663 --> 00:03:44,646
Chess theory was born.

55
00:03:44,646 --> 00:03:49,986
With the Enlightenment era, the game 
moved from royal courts to coffeehouses.

56
00:03:49,986 --> 00:03:53,796
Chess was now seen as an expression 
of creativity,

57
00:03:53,796 --> 00:03:57,376
encouraging bold moves and dramatic plays.

58
00:03:57,376 --> 00:04:03,796
This ‘Romantic’ style reached its peak 
in the Immortal Game of 1851,

59
00:04:03,796 --> 00:04:07,078
where Adolf Anderssen managed a checkmate

60
00:04:07,078 --> 00:04:11,408
after sacrificing his queen 
and both rooks.

61
00:04:11,408 --> 00:04:15,963
But the emergence of formal competitive 
play in the late 19th century

62
00:04:15,963 --> 00:04:21,157
meant that strategic calculation would 
eventually trump dramatic flair.

63
00:04:21,157 --> 00:04:23,585
And with the rise of international 
competition,

64
00:04:23,585 --> 00:04:27,495
chess took on a new 
geopolitical importance.

65
00:04:27,495 --> 00:04:28,745
During the Cold War,

66
00:04:28,745 --> 00:04:33,585
the Soviet Union devoted great resources
to cultivating chess talent,

67
00:04:33,585 --> 00:04:37,457
dominating the championships for the rest 
of the century.

68
00:04:37,457 --> 00:04:40,907
But the player who would truly upset 
Russian dominance

69
00:04:40,907 --> 00:04:43,347
was not a citizen of another country

70
00:04:43,347 --> 00:04:47,697
but an IBM computer called Deep Blue.

71
00:04:47,697 --> 00:04:50,862
Chess-playing computers had been 
developed for decades,

72
00:04:50,862 --> 00:04:55,462
but Deep Blue’s triumph 
over Garry Kasparov in 1997

73
00:04:55,465 --> 00:05:00,475
was the first time a machine 
had defeated a sitting champion.

74
00:05:00,484 --> 00:05:04,794
Today, chess software is capable of 
consistently defeating

75
00:05:04,799 --> 00:05:06,639
the best human players.

76
00:05:06,639 --> 00:05:08,759
But just like the game they’ve mastered,

77
00:05:08,759 --> 00:05:12,149
these machines are products 
of human ingenuity.

78
00:05:12,149 --> 00:05:18,439
And perhaps that same ingenuity will guide
us out of this apparent checkmate.