Introduction
At an early age, when I was first being taught the rules of chess, I immediately wondered – how come the queen is the mightiest on the board but the king is the most important piece. How come the queen even combines the moves of the two other chess pieces while the king moves just one square at the time?
In this book, Yalom tries to answer that and all the similar questions about the game and its queen by going through the history of chess and history of the queen chess piece in particular. Birth of the chess queen takes us on the hundreds of years long journey throughout Europe and its history of queens both on and off the chess board.
This is one of the most famous queen sacrifices in history. In his famous Game of the Century against Byrne in 1956, Fischer did not move his queen when Byrne played 16.Bc5. It’s black to play. How would you evaluate the position?
Chess before the Queen
Birth of the Chess Queen: A History is divided into five parts, where part one is about the chess before the queen.Yalom, Stanford scholar at the time, did a vast research and wrote a short history of chess itself. She writes how it came to Europe from Asia, where it was played mostly by men and with male figurines only. There was no queen but the vizier stood next to the king like a protector and the king’s right hand.
Chess at that time was a war game which in Europe slowly, through centuries, evolved into a game played mostly by aristocratic couples in courting (as it was designed for two players and one game sometimes lasted even for days). I found this part of the book most interesting as it brings not widely known fun facts so to say.
God save the Queen
In parts two through four the book introduces us to political circumstances in the lands it goes through and the queens that have had the biggest impact on the chess queen. Slowly chess became the game we all know today and spread through all the social classes.
Part five is about the chess queen as it is now, the new chess as it is called. It also gives us the authors’ view of women in chess today.
Conclusion
If you are like me and you need to know why things function the way they do, I suggest this book as a quick introduction to a short version of chess history. It is very readable and tells you about chess becoming the game in the form it is played today although it concentrates on the chess queen.
Other chess novels you might like:
