Magnetic 10" Square
Travel Chess
Click on the picture to enlarge.
Beautifully-made, magnetic, 10" square travel chess set. Very strong
magnets, one of the nicest examples on the market.
Has a slide-out drawer for snug storage of all the pieces. The king size
is: 2 1/4 inch
Chess pieces in sheesham and boxwood made in India.
Comes in a presentation box.
Complete with instruction booklet by David Pritchard.
Change to $  Change to  |
UK pounds (ex.VAT) |
Pounds (incl. VAT) |
Typical ETA in wkg days |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Magnetic 10 inch Square Chess (2¼ inch King) |
£39.91 | £45.90 | 1 + transit time | ||
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The Origin of Chess
A great deal has been written about the origins of chess 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.
Under Hindu law, gambling became forbidden early on in the Hindu civilisation and, to avoid the gambling laws, shaturanga players dispensed with the dice. Another early modification was the merging of the allied armies into a single army making the game a two player form and duplicating the pieces, both developments which have survived until today. Other changes also occurred; and the resulting game was called shatranj.
There are three versions of the story of arrival of shatranj in Europe - did it come from the Saracens via Spain, from the Byzantine empire as a present to Charlemagne or was it brought back from the Middle East by Knights returning from the Crusades?. Nonetheless, in Europe, the game developed into modern European chess now played worldwide while in China, Japan, Burma, Thailand and Korea, other variants became just as popular.
You can learn more about the History of Chess from The Online Guide to Traditional Games.