Mini-Giant Chequerboard
Click on the picture to enlarge.
Made by Rolly in Germany this is a great Mini-Giant lawn-friendly chequerboard for use with any of our Mini Giant Chess or Draughts sets.
Makes a chessboard 150cm (5ft) square
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Rolly Mini-Giant Lawn-friendly Chequerboard |
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Creating your own Board
Many people opt to create a permanent board on hard ground. You can use patio tiles, or paving slabs or just paint squares on clear ground. For these Mini Giant Draughts sets, squares of around 150-300mm square are recommended (ideally 200-250mm but the 2 pictures above show a patio with squares 150mm and that works fine). See our Chess board painting FAQ for more info.
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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.