How Chess has Changed Over the Years

When people first started playing chess is was a game of style rather than a competitive game like has been in recent years. A great example of this is one of the most famous games ever played in chess history. The game nicknamed The Immortal Game because Adolf Anderssen, playing with the white pieces, sacrificed his queen to win the game with style rather than a safer and more straightforward approach to winning. This is what people tried to do back in 1851 and it's good for an exciting game to watch but is not a safe option to win.

People didn't only play differently, they also had different rules. One of the most noticeable ones is how people promote their paws. How do you promote a pawn? How you promote a pawn is pushing it all the way to your opponent's back rank. What this does is now you can turn it into any piece in the game, but how it used to be was it would only turn into the piece who's file its on. If you promoted a pawn on the side of the board, it would turn into a rook because the rook starts on the side. Another promotion change was you used to be able to promote to your opponents pieces. You would usually not want to do this but it was useful in some situations like this one.




This position has white mating black in one move before the promotion rule change.

The answer is pawn to b8 promoting to a black rook checkmate.

Many rules are local rules. In India, it used to be that pawns could only move one square at a time, and in some other places, pawns could only move by capturing your opponent's pieces. Rules only became universal when people from different regions played each other competitively in 1834.

When I first started to playing chess, all I would do was attack and try to find ways to break my opponents position down. This is how people first started playing chess in the 1700s and for some of the 1800s. They played simply by attacking and trying to charge in and break their opponents pawn structure and attack head on. It makes sense that they would play this way and develop better strategies over generations because a single chess game can have over 288 billion different possible positions after only four moves each so it would take many years for people to find the best moves. The fundamentals have stayed the same for the most part but it is a relatively new thing to keep your king safe early on in the game.

Let me give you an example of one of the games I've played:
https://en.lichess.org/Hxvcr0Hu5z98

This is a game I played online and I played an opening called the stonewall attack. This is where I control the center of the board so I have the option to attack either side of the board. I messed up in the mid-game when I left my queen hanging on b4. Because I made this mistake, I have to take some chances or I'll eventually lose the game to his superior pieces. I attack with my rook on the queen's side which distracts him so my knight can then get a fork on his king and rook with my knight on the king's side on move thirty-four. Because he had sacrificed three pawns and a bishop for my queen, I am now up three pawns and can just push them down the queen's side and win the game.

Sources:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-chess-has-changed-over-the-last-150-years-1707692642
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+moves+in+a+chess+game&oq=ho&aqs=chrome.0.69i59l3j69i61j69i60j69i61.1457j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#safe=active&q=immortal+game&*