Early Islamic chess masters such as al-Adli, ar-Razi and al-Suli wrote influential chess books. From early manuscripts we know both how the pieces moved and the basic rules of play. In Europe, chess pieces went from abstract shapes back to figures; a 13th-century Spanish book of games said chess was a nobler and more honoured game than dice or backgammon. In 1749 the French master Francois-Andre Philidor published a chess book, Analyse du jeu des Echecs, that held the line "The pawns are the soul of chess". In 1849 Jaques of London sold the Staunton pattern, a new style of pieces, and it became popular very quickly; before chess clocks, one game could last up to 14 hours.

In the 1700s a chess "machine" called the Mechanical Turk toured Europe, and it actually hid a skilled human player inside. In 1820 the Mechanical Turk beat 28-year-old Charles Babbage. In the 1850s the American Paul Morphy toured Europe and beat almost every top player he met. William Steinitz was recognized as the first world chess champion, and he held the title until 1894. In 1996 Kasparov played the computer Deep Blue in Philadelphia. Deep Blue won the first game, but Kasparov won the match, 4 to 2. In May 1997 the two met again in New York, and Deep Blue won the match, 3.5 to 2.5. Deep Blue could evaluate 200 million chess positions a second, using 32 processors. Garry Kasparov was the first player to cross the 2800 mark on the official FIDE rating list.

In 2017 a program called AlphaZero was given only the rules of chess and learned by playing against itself. Stockfish is a free, open-source chess engine developed by a community of programmers, and as of November 2026 it is the highest-rated engine on the computer chess rating list. Far more people play chess online than over the board, as of November 2026. In 2013 Magnus Carlsen of Norway beat Viswanathan Anand to become world champion. Carlsen won four more world championship matches, then in 2023 chose not to defend the classical title. Ding Liren of China became world champion in 2023 by beating Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia. As of November 2026 the highest official FIDE classical rating ever is 2882, reached by Carlsen in 2014, and no human player has officially reached 2900.

On December 12, 2024, 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju of India beat Ding Liren of China in Singapore to become the youngest world chess champion. The match score was 7.5 to 6.5. Gukesh broke a record held by Garry Kasparov, who became world champion in 1985 at age 22. The 1948 world championship was the first one overseen by FIDE. The first grandmaster titles were awarded to 27 players in 1950. Karpov was known for a solid positional style that has been compared to a boa constrictor. In the endgame the king often steps into the center or forward to support a passed pawn; a player who is ahead in material usually wants to trade pieces, and a player who is behind tries to avoid trades. A good reply to the scholar's mate threat is the move g6, which attacks the white queen and makes White move her away.

Words to know

• engine: chess program
• processors: computer chips
• Mechanical: machine-like
• online: on the internet
• grandmaster: top title