Chess Boards and Sets Catalog

<body> <h1><font size="2" face="Arial">Chess Boards and Chess Sets</font></h1> <h1><font size="2" face="Arial">Our chessmen, chess boards and chess tables are a wonderful gift or decorating accessory.  Our chessmen sets include Traditional Staunton, Elite Staunton and themed sets such as the Battle of Gettysburg, Waterloo, Camelot, Imperial and the Ming Dynasty.  Our chess and game tables include materials such as brass, oak, alabaster, mahogany, briar, wormwood and inlaid mosaic.</font></h1> <h1><font size="2" face="Arial">HIGH QUALITY decorative Chess Sets make unusual and distinctive luxury gifts that will grace even the finest decor in the finest of homes.</font></h1> <h1><font size="2" face="Arial">A great deal has been written about the origins of the modern Chess variants and there is still a lot of debate on the subject. The earliest clear ancestor of Chess is Shaturanga or Chaturanga which was invented by a 6th century Indian philosopher. It was a battle between four armies each under the control of a Rajah (king), two players being loosely allied against the other two and and each containing 4 corps - Infantry, Cavalry, Elephants and Boatmen. The board of 64 squares used for Shaturanga, was borrowed from an earlier game called Ashtapada, which was a race game played in Ancient India. The pieces of Shaturanga were represented viz.:</font></h1> <ul> <li> <h1><font size="2" face="Arial">Infantry - 4 Pawns which moved as pawns do in Chess</font></h1> <li> <h1><font size="2" face="Arial">Boatmen - A ship which could only move 2 squares diagonally but could jump over intervening pieces</font></h1> <li> <h1><font size="2" face="Arial">Cavalry - A horse which could move like a Knight in Chess</font></h1> <li> <h1><font size="2" face="Arial">Elephant - An elephant which could move like a Rook in Chess</font></h1> <li> <h1><font size="2" face="Arial">Rajah - A human figure which could move like a King in Chess</font></h1> </li> </ul> <h1><font size="2" face="Arial">The game started with the four armies in each of the four corners, in a double row, like Chess, the four main pieces behind the four pawns. Other than the fact that it was a game for four players, the other main difference was the use of dice to decide which piece moved each turn.</font></h1> <h1><font face="Arial" size="2">Chess in roughly the form of today appeared in in Southern Europe around the end of the 15th century and quickly became popular Europe wide. The powers of certain pieces were increased and new rules were added such as castling, two square pawn advance, and en passant. The most important changes turned the Fers into the most powerful piece of all, the Queen and the Alfil into the far-ranging Bishop by unrestricting it's power of diagonal movement.</font></h1> <h1><font face="Arial" size="2">In 1749, Francois-Andre Danican Philidor, a composer and leading Chess player at the time, published 'L'analyse du jeu des Echecs' (Analysis of the game of chess). This is one of the greatest Chess works of literature ever written and has been translated into many languages since. Howard Staunton, the top player in the mid 19th century also wrote several important theoretical works and organized the first international chess tournament in London in 1851.  This was won by Adolf Anderssen from Germany.  In 1858, Paul Charles Morphy came to Europe from the USA and managed to take the mantle of best player at a very youthful age.</font></h1> <h1><font face="Arial" size="2">The history of chess pieces is also a story worth telling.  Until the mid 19th century, pieces tended to come as one of two extremes.   The rich would display very ornate expensive decorate pieces with delicately crafted representations of kings, queens etc. which were often top-heavy and impractical while everyone else mostly used roughly hewn wooden lumps with only the height of the pieces to distinguish between them.  </font></h1> <h1><font face="Arial" size="2">In 1847, John Jaques of London created a new design which hit a happy medium between the two and was both practical and elegant.  On the one hand, the pieces were easily distinguishable by easily recognizable symbols atop a pedestal - the King with a crown, the Queen with a coronet and the bishop by a miter.  The pawn is supposed to be a representation of the mason symbol for square and compasses while the piece de resistance, the knight, is an copy of the horse cut into the Elgin marble in Italy.   On the other hand, by using different heights of pedestal, the useful idea of representation by height was retained.  Howard Staunton apparently immediately realized the overall benefit of such a new design and lent his name to the new pieces which were duly launched in 1849.  These Staunton pieces were immediately popular and soon became all the rage.  At the end of the century, the design had evolved slightly - the protuberances of certain pieces were reduced or made more robust to prevent breakages and enable easier mass production.  The newly released 1890 design quickly became the de facto standard for Chess all over the world and it has stayed that way ever since.  Jaques of London, uniquely, are still owned and run by the Jaques family and their Staunton sets are still used worldwide by most National Chess organizations and tournaments</font></h1> <h1><font face="Arial" size="2">Computer programs which can play Chess were first written in the 1960's but these were easily beaten. Since then Chess programs have become increasingly better at the game and can now beat all but the best Grand Masters. In 1997, history was made when Deep Blue 2, a machine running the best Chess program yet written, managed to beat Kasparov, the undisputed best player in the world at the time.</font></h1> <h1> </h1> </body>