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| Early Chess Pieces |
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Shantranj
Or
Chess
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The pieces in shatranj had limited movement; the elephant or aufin (the predecessor of the modern bishop) could only move by jumping two spaces diagonally, the counselor or fers (the predecessor of the modern queen) could move only one space diagonally, pawns could not advance two spaces on their first move, and there was no castling. Also, pawns could only promote to counselor, which was the weakest piece (after the pawn), due to its limited range.[8]
Around 1200, rules started to be modified in southern Europe, and around 1475, several major changes rendered the game essentially as we know it today.[9] These modern rules for the basic moves had been adopted in Italy[10] (or in Spain according to other sources[11]): pawns gained the option of advancing two squares on their first move and the en passant capture therewith, while bishops and queens acquired their modern abilities. This made the queen the most powerful piece; consequently modern chess was referred to as "Queen's Chess" or "Mad Queen Chess".[12] These new rules quickly spread throughout western Europe, with the exception of the rules about stalemate, which varied from place to place and were finalized in the early 19th century.[13]
This was also the time when chess started to develop a corpus of theory. The oldest preserved printed chess book, Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez (Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess) by Spanish churchman Luis Ramirez de Lucena was published in Salamanca in 1497.[14] Lucena and later masters of the 16th and 17th century like Portuguese Pedro Damiano, Italians Giovanni Leonardo Di Bona, Giulio Cesare Polerio and Gioachino Greco or Spanish bishop Ruy López de Segura developed elements of openings, such as the Italian Game, King's Gambit and Ruy Lopez, and started to analyze simple endgames.
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