The History of Chess in Fifty Moves recounts the 1,500-year history of the game of royals, from its ancient beginnings to Deep Blue, Kasparov and internet chess.

As stand-alone stories or in sequence, the 50 chapters explain how chess has changed, adapted, and thrived through the centuries. It reveals the sublime players, the controversies, the great tournaments and upsets, the victories... nothing is overlooked.

Entertaining and faithful text descriptions, artwork reproductions, archival photographs, callout boxes, quotations of interest, and chessboard diagrams bring chess's colorful history to life.

The stories cover the globe's chessboards and the game's generations of players, including:

• The Turk, the automaton hoax that fooled royalty
• Theories on the origin of chess
• The longest match
• The Polgar sisters
• The decline of Boris Spassky
• The Bobby Fischer phenomenon
• The Soviet invasion
• Chess, codebreaking and Bletchley Park
• The female Soviet, Vera Menchik
• The first official chess Olympiad
• Phillip Stamma notates chess
• The Da Vinci connection
• Capablanca versus Alekhine
• The Internet changes everything.

For chess players at all levels, The History of Chess in Fifty Moves is an exciting treat they will return to again and again.