WEBVTT

00:00:07.230 --> 00:00:10.820
The attacking infantry advances steadily,

00:00:10.820 --> 00:00:14.980
their elephants already having 
broken the defensive line.

00:00:14.980 --> 00:00:19.990
The king tries to retreat, but enemy 
cavalry flanks him from the rear.

00:00:19.990 --> 00:00:23.010
Escape is impossible.

00:00:23.010 --> 00:00:25.200
But this isn’t a real war–

00:00:25.200 --> 00:00:27.250
nor is it just a game.

00:00:27.250 --> 00:00:32.000
Over the roughly one-and-a-half millennia 
of its existence,

00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:35.897
chess has been known as a tool 
of military strategy,

00:00:35.897 --> 00:00:41.497
a metaphor for human affairs, 
and a benchmark of genius.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:41.497 --> 00:00:45.376
While our earliest records of chess 
are in the 7th century,

00:00:45.376 --> 00:00:50.076
legend tells that the game’s origins 
lie a century earlier.

00:00:50.076 --> 00:00:55.696
Supposedly, when the youngest prince 
of the Gupta Empire was killed in battle,

00:00:55.696 --> 00:01:00.622
his brother devised a way of representing
the scene to their grieving mother.

00:01:00.622 --> 00:01:06.801
Set on the 8x8 ashtapada board used for
other popular pastimes,

00:01:06.801 --> 00:01:10.894
a new game emerged with two key features:

00:01:10.894 --> 00:01:14.319
different rules for moving 
different types of pieces,

00:01:14.319 --> 00:01:19.179
and a single king piece whose fate 
determined the outcome.

00:01:19.179 --> 00:01:23.283
The game was originally 
known as chaturanga–

00:01:23.283 --> 00:01:26.344
a Sanskrit word for "four divisions."

00:01:26.344 --> 00:01:28.894
But with its spread to Sassanid Persia,

00:01:28.894 --> 00:01:31.774
it acquired its current name 
and terminology–

00:01:31.774 --> 00:01:38.804
"chess," derived from "shah," meaning 
king, and “checkmate” from "shah mat,"

00:01:38.804 --> 00:01:41.744
or “the king is helpless.”

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:41.744 --> 00:01:45.534
After the 7th century Islamic conquest 
of Persia,

00:01:45.534 --> 00:01:48.184
chess was introduced to the Arab world.

00:01:48.184 --> 00:01:51.304
Transcending its role as a 
tactical simulation,

00:01:51.304 --> 00:01:54.984
it eventually became a rich source 
of poetic imagery.

00:01:54.984 --> 00:02:00.154
Diplomats and courtiers used chess terms 
to describe political power.

00:02:00.154 --> 00:02:03.765
Ruling caliphs became avid 
players themselves.

00:02:03.765 --> 00:02:09.115
And historian al-Mas’udi considered the 
game a testament to human free will

00:02:09.115 --> 00:02:11.679
compared to games of chance.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:11.679 --> 00:02:17.289
Medieval trade along the Silk Road carried
the game to East and Southeast Asia,

00:02:17.289 --> 00:02:20.316
where many local variants developed.

00:02:20.316 --> 00:02:24.776
In China, chess pieces were placed at 
intersections of board squares

00:02:24.776 --> 00:02:29.496
rather than inside them, as in the native 
strategy game Go.

00:02:29.496 --> 00:02:34.408
The reign of Mongol leader Tamerlane saw 
an 11x10 board

00:02:34.408 --> 00:02:37.428
with safe squares called citadels.

00:02:37.428 --> 00:02:43.188
And in Japanese shogi, captured pieces 
could be used by the opposing player.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:43.188 --> 00:02:47.518
But it was in Europe that chess began to 
take on its modern form.

00:02:47.518 --> 00:02:52.512
By 1000 AD, the game had become part 
of courtly education.

00:02:52.512 --> 00:02:54.762
Chess was used as an allegory

00:02:54.762 --> 00:02:58.572
for different social classes performing 
their proper roles,

00:02:58.572 --> 00:03:02.439
and the pieces were re-interpreted 
in their new context.

00:03:02.439 --> 00:03:06.949
At the same time, the Church remained 
suspicious of games.

00:03:06.949 --> 00:03:10.713
Moralists cautioned against devoting 
too much time to them,

00:03:10.713 --> 00:03:14.643
with chess even being briefly 
banned in France.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:14.643 --> 00:03:16.673
Yet the game proliferated,

00:03:16.673 --> 00:03:21.603
and the 15th century saw it cohering into
the form we know today.

00:03:21.603 --> 00:03:27.195
The relatively weak piece of advisor was 
recast as the more powerful queen–

00:03:27.195 --> 00:03:31.952
perhaps inspired by the recent surge 
of strong female leaders.

00:03:31.952 --> 00:03:34.723
This change accelerated the game’s pace,

00:03:34.723 --> 00:03:36.953
and as other rules were popularized,

00:03:36.953 --> 00:03:41.663
treatises analyzing common openings 
and endgames appeared.

00:03:41.663 --> 00:03:44.646
Chess theory was born.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:44.646 --> 00:03:49.986
With the Enlightenment era, the game 
moved from royal courts to coffeehouses.

00:03:49.986 --> 00:03:53.796
Chess was now seen as an expression 
of creativity,

00:03:53.796 --> 00:03:57.376
encouraging bold moves and dramatic plays.

00:03:57.376 --> 00:04:03.796
This "Romantic" style reached its peak 
in the Immortal Game of 1851,

00:04:03.796 --> 00:04:07.078
where Adolf Anderssen managed a checkmate

00:04:07.078 --> 00:04:11.408
after sacrificing his queen 
and both rooks.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:11.408 --> 00:04:15.963
But the emergence of formal competitive 
play in the late 19th century

00:04:15.963 --> 00:04:21.157
meant that strategic calculation would 
eventually trump dramatic flair.

00:04:21.157 --> 00:04:23.585
And with the rise of international 
competition,

00:04:23.585 --> 00:04:27.495
chess took on a new 
geopolitical importance.

00:04:27.495 --> 00:04:28.745
During the Cold War,

00:04:28.745 --> 00:04:33.585
the Soviet Union devoted great resources
to cultivating chess talent,

00:04:33.585 --> 00:04:37.457
dominating the championships for the rest 
of the century.

00:04:37.457 --> 00:04:40.907
But the player who would truly upset 
Russian dominance

00:04:40.907 --> 00:04:43.347
was not a citizen of another country

00:04:43.347 --> 00:04:47.697
but an IBM computer called Deep Blue.

00:04:47.697 --> 00:04:50.862
Chess-playing computers had been 
developed for decades,

00:04:50.862 --> 00:04:55.462
but Deep Blue’s triumph 
over Garry Kasparov in 1997

00:04:55.465 --> 00:05:00.475
was the first time a machine 
had defeated a sitting champion.

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:00.484 --> 00:05:04.794
Today, chess software is capable of 
consistently defeating

00:05:04.799 --> 00:05:06.639
the best human players.

00:05:06.639 --> 00:05:08.759
But just like the game they’ve mastered,

00:05:08.759 --> 00:05:12.149
these machines are products 
of human ingenuity.

00:05:12.149 --> 00:05:18.439
And perhaps that same ingenuity will guide
us out of this apparent checkmate.