Today, 20th of July is "International Chess Day". Chess is one of the oldest games in the world. It helps to develop skills like tactics, strategy, and visual memory. Like any other thing, Chess has also evolved a lot over the period of time.
Chess was invented in Northern Indian Subcontinent during the Gupta period (319 – 543 CE). It is called "Chaturanga". Chaturanga means '4 divisions', as it was played by 4 people. In modern chess, the 4 divisions refer to the 4 main pieces and their moves (infantry(Pawns), cavalry (knight), elephantry(bishop), and chariot (rook) other than, king and queen) and it has become a 2 player game.
An ambassador from the Indian subcontinent visited king Khosrow(531-579 CE) and gifted him a Chaturanga game. From there it started to spread slowly around the world. Today, there exist over 1000 variants of the game.
On July 20, 1924, at the eighth summer Olympic Games in Paris, France, FIDE (World Chess Federation) was founded. FIDE started celebrating this founding day as "International Chess Day" in 1966. On 12th December 2019, when UN General Assembly unanimously proclaimed the founding day of FIDE as a world chess day, it got more popularity.
Below stamps are issued by, Hungary and Mongolia respectively.
E. Lasker depicted in Mongolian stamp was a German Chess player who won the World Chess Champion for 27 years, from 1894 to 1921.
