Chaturanga – The mother word from which was derived the other names. Chaturanga means, "Four divisions of the military"

Chess is the name now used for denoting this beautiful game. A game played on 64 squares, is controlled by the most potent minds of today. A simple fact which tells us the game complexity is, in essence a chess board has 64 apparent squares for anyone who takes a mere look at it. But there are as many as 204 possible legal squares that can be established on any given board.

It’s not a game of specific gender which makes itself admirable. Even the pieces are not single gendered. And, I believe that’s why there are two pieces of the same designation in it (a thing to think right?!) Though the colors, white and black are there, it doesn’t involve any race. It is used simply to signify the difference!

Mysteries unrevealed

Characteristically an average position has 30 to 40 possible moves, but there may be as few as zero (in the case of checkmate or stalemate) or as many as 218. The game-tree complexity of chess was first calculated as 10¹²⁰. The number of legal positions in chess is estimated to be between 10⁴³ and 10⁵⁰, with a game-tree complexity of approximately 10¹²³. For example, 10² = 100 (i.e., 1 followed by two zeroes) Now imagine 10¹²³. Can u believe?? It’s a number which is far beyond human imagination!

Patterns absorbed with players

When faced with random arrangements of chess pieces, masters and novices had equivalent recall. Players show that knowledge and verbal, rather than visuo-spatial, ability lies at the core of expertise. Memorization ability alone does not account for this skill. Rather, it is the ability to recognize patterns, which are then memorized.

Pros

I believe that playing this game increases the thinking capacity. Transferring the thinking abilities from 64 squares to real life perspective; it helps one with dynamic thinking. Every human does think. But it is likely that chess players think more practically and logically when exposed to various problems. Be it life or game. The most important point is they can see both the sides of the coin without even touching the coin!

Cons

I haven’t found one till date.

To finish with, Chess is not merely a game. It’s immortal as called by chess psychologists.

• Written by Kumaran.
• In category Indoor Games.
• 15 years ago.

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