The attacking infantry advances steadily, their elephants already having  broken the defensive line. The king tries to retreat, but enemy  cavalry flanks him from the rear. Escape is impossible. But this isn’t a real war– nor is it just a game. Over the roughly one-and-a-half millennia  of its existence, chess has been known as a tool  of military strategy, a metaphor for human affairs,  and a benchmark of genius. While our earliest records of chess  are in the 7th century, legend tells that the game’s origins  lie a century earlier. Supposedly, when the youngest prince  of the Gupta Empire was killed in battle, his brother devised a way of representing the scene to their grieving mother. Set on the 8x8 ashtapada board used for other popular pastimes, a new game emerged with two key features: different rules for moving  different types of pieces, and a single king piece whose fate  determined the outcome. The game was originally  known as chaturanga– a Sanskrit word for "four divisions." But with its spread to Sassanid Persia, it acquired its current name  and terminology– "chess," derived from "shah," meaning  king, and “checkmate” from "shah mat," or “the king is helpless.” After the 7th century Islamic conquest  of Persia, chess was introduced to the Arab world. Transcending its role as a  tactical simulation, it eventually became a rich source  of poetic imagery. Diplomats and courtiers used chess terms  to describe political power. Ruling caliphs became avid  players themselves. And historian al-Mas’udi considered the  game a testament to human free will compared to games of chance. Medieval trade along the Silk Road carried the game to East and Southeast Asia, where many local variants developed. In China, chess pieces were placed at  intersections of board squares rather than inside them, as in the native  strategy game Go. The reign of Mongol leader Tamerlane saw  an 11x10 board with safe squares called citadels. And in Japanese shogi, captured pieces  could be used by the opposing player. But it was in Europe that chess began to  take on its modern form. By 1000 AD, the game had become part  of courtly education. Chess was used as an allegory for different social classes performing  their proper roles, and the pieces were re-interpreted  in their new context. At the same time, the Church remained  suspicious of games. Moralists cautioned against devoting  too much time to them, with chess even being briefly  banned in France. Yet the game proliferated, and the 15th century saw it cohering into the form we know today. The relatively weak piece of advisor was  recast as the more powerful queen– perhaps inspired by the recent surge  of strong female leaders. This change accelerated the game’s pace, and as other rules were popularized, treatises analyzing common openings  and endgames appeared. Chess theory was born. With the Enlightenment era, the game  moved from royal courts to coffeehouses. Chess was now seen as an expression  of creativity, encouraging bold moves and dramatic plays. This "Romantic" style reached its peak  in the Immortal Game of 1851, where Adolf Anderssen managed a checkmate after sacrificing his queen  and both rooks. But the emergence of formal competitive  play in the late 19th century meant that strategic calculation would  eventually trump dramatic flair. And with the rise of international  competition, chess took on a new  geopolitical importance. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union devoted great resources to cultivating chess talent, dominating the championships for the rest  of the century. But the player who would truly upset  Russian dominance was not a citizen of another country but an IBM computer called Deep Blue. Chess-playing computers had been  developed for decades, but Deep Blue’s triumph  over Garry Kasparov in 1997 was the first time a machine  had defeated a sitting champion. Today, chess software is capable of  consistently defeating the best human players. But just like the game they’ve mastered, these machines are products  of human ingenuity. And perhaps that same ingenuity will guide us out of this apparent checkmate.