Chess had its roots in Indus Valley Civlization

I think that you have too high an opinion of chess. Chess is a very simple game basically. Arrange the pieces on a board, some pieces move in a certain way, you can take out an enemy piece by jumping on them and when you take out the enemie's king piece you have won, simple. Make no mistake about it chess is an abstract game and is usually listed as such. If it simulates a real battle then it does a very poor job of it. I mean what prevents an elephant from running forward or backward rather than just diagonal or how can a cavalry unit just jump over infantry much less elephants. Its just a boardgame not a wargame and yes wargames did exist in those times not maybe in the boardgame format but they did exist at least in China i think. And about the square grid idea i think this one was excavated with a square grid board (i am not sure because i haven't seen its picture) and the square grid board is a pretty basic concept it was being used in Egypt for checkers at about the same time so i don't really know that from where you are coming from. Noone is saying that the chess was played then as per the modern rules, even classical chess differs from modern chess (Mad Queen's Chess)where the pieces could only move a certain number of steps, we are just saying that it is an ancestor of Chess.

Originally posted by elenos I have played chess for most of my life as with many other board games so I have a good idea about board games from real time experience. I already have conceded your point about India having games that were probably the ancestor of chess. I learned early on to play Chinese chess where there are four opposing players coming from each corner and I believe there was an Indian version of the same thing.

So agreed it wasn't modern chess (it couldn't be because even classical chess differs from modern ones) but was just an ancestor of it.

Originally posted by Dolphin Originally posted by bilal_ali_2000 I think that you have too high an opinion of chess. Chess is a very simple game basically. Arrange the pieces on a board, some pieces move in a certain way, you can take out an enemy piece by jumping on them and when you take out the enemie's king piece you have won, simple. Make no mistake about it chess is an abstract game and is usually listed as such. If it simulates a real battle then it does a very poor job of it. I mean what prevents an elephant from running forward or backward rather than just diagonal or how can a cavalry unit just jump over infantry much less elephants. Its just a boardgame not a wargame and yes wargames did exist in those times not maybe in the boardgame format but they did exist at least in China i think. And about the square grid idea i think this one was excavated with a square grid board (i am not sure because i haven't seen its picture) and the square grid board is a pretty basic concept it was being used in Egypt for checkers at about the same time so i don't really know that from where you are coming from. Noone is saying that the chess was played then as per the modern rules, even classical chess differs from modern chess (Mad Queen's Chess)where the pieces could only move a certain number of steps, we are just saying that it is an ancestor of Chess.         http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6907018.stm   "With the vast number of playing possibilities, draughts is the most complex game to have been solved to date - it was about a million times more complicated to solve than Connect Four. Researchers are now hoping to move on to even bigger problems. However, it seems that grand master of the board games - chess - may remain unsolved for some time. It has somewhere in the range of a billion billion billion billion billion possible positions, meaning that computers, with their current capacity, would take aeons to solve it. "       Sounds pretty complex to me, in fact it sounds like the most complex board game on the planet..

No one is denying the complexity of chess when played. I was just saying that in its rules its a very simple game.  And i doubt  that  its rules  were arrived after taking into consideration all the billion billion billion billion billion possible states

I stand by what i said about the basic rules of chess being very simple. As a demonstration put down the rules of chess and any other board game such as Risk or monopoly and you will find that the rules of these relatively simpler games to be greater than chess let alone war simulator type boardgames or tabletop RPGs. That is the beauty of chess you only need to learn a few rules to play it but the resulting game is much more richer than otherwise its simple rules might indicate. This is why its so popular and playable because it is imagination intensive rather than memory intensive.

Want to know what the secret of the richness of chess is. I have been doing research on the subject for quite some while and i am currently writing a thesis on the subject which will allow you to develop your own game almost as rich as chess. I will try not to get too technical here so i will explain it in as simple a  words as possible.  
The secret of the playability of Chess is that there are a large number of possible positions and a very large number of those possible positions are the end positions.
Let me elaborate a little. The first position in chess is the initial position where the chess pieces are arranged in a certain way. A few positions can happen from there the first turn person can move the pawns or the knights so based on his choice about 12 positions can happen (eight for the pawns (we are playing with no two initial steps for the pawns rule) and two each for the knights pieces) then based on his choice we will have the next position which will be one of the 12 possible positions then that position will lead to another position which will be based on the choice of the other player which will be one of the 12 possible positions at the disposal of the other player so in two moves we have a number of possible positions amounting to 12*12=144. If the pawns clear the way for the Queen then the number of possible positions on the next moves grows quite dramatically. Now what is the end position for Chess. It is when the enemy's piece is knocked out. However its a very general idea, it does not specify anything about the other pieces that where they should be so that means that the pieces can be anywhere it does not matter if your queen is on say A4 or on B6 it makes no difference if you get the king, you don't get any extra points for ending the game one way or the other. What this results in a large number of possible positions which can be the end positions, it does not matter that whether you have only your queen and a few pieces in the game with your king you can still beat the other guy which is as good for beating the guy with the his whole army or you can have your entire army on the board you can still be beaten you wont get any extra points for losing the game in a more dignified manner. What this does is that really expands the game for any decision you take there is always a possiblity that you can reach an end state and win the game. While in other games where end state is much less general usually involving knocking all the other pieces of the opponent out so if you make one big mistake in the beginning that usually means end of game if the other player plays his cards right. For example in checkers if you leave a position open in the back line for the other players piece to become a queen early in the game it usually is game over. However in chess there are very rarely such fixed rules which decide that whether you can be beaten
or not unless your king is knocked out, you can lose your queen quite early in the game yet still win the game the other player has to make a lot of decisions right to win the game and not relying on one mistake from the other player to win the game and this is where chess derives its strategical element from.
Based on these ideas i am designing a few boardgames of mine. One is called "Romeo" or "Mujnoo". In this game there are two sides one is the romeo side and the other is the "Cruel World " or "Zalim Samaj" side.  It is the task of "Romeo" to win the hand of "Juliet" or "Laila" and it is the objective of the "cruel world" side to prevent that from happening . Then there is this game where you live in an inn town which is located right around a busy street and there are a lot of visitors to the town on their way to the capital and you have to deal with them. There are a lot of ways that you can end the game and how you play the game says a lot about you as person. Then there is this huge militiary strategy game based on real life equipment. Then there is this game where upto eight players can and at least four players play the game and it will be a battle strategy game with its main game play element being about forming alliances and so on which can be a great social game. These are all game ideas were you are actually feeling the decisions and have emotional connections to the action. I think that thes will be quite satisfying to play.  
On a sidenote has anyone ever played chess with the classical rules i suspect that it will be a lot slower but much more strategy based where you have to move keeping the other pieces of yours in mind hence you have to move in formations. Sounds interesting.