The best evidence is that chess originated in India in roughly the middle of the sixth century AD.  That date is suggested by a Persian poem written about 600 AD which refers to chess coming from India.  Literature dated about 50 to 150 years later again describes chess as coming to Persia from India.

The original name for the game was "chaturanga", a Sanskrit word meaning "four-limbed".  The name refers to the four divisions of the Indian army - foot soldiers, cavalry, chariots, and elephants.  This earliest form of the game was set on the "ashtapada" (meaning "eight-footed"), a board of sixty-four squares.

It is important to note that chaturanga was a word first applied directly to the Indian armies, and only later to the game we now know as chess.  The ashtapada existed as early on as the second century BC.  This means that in its original form, chess was seen solely as a war game, since it was named directly after the army.  It started out as a method of training battlefield commanders and only later evolved into a recreational pastime.

From India, chess expanded to the Persian Empire.  It is most likely that chess was introduced during the reign of Khusrau Nushirwan, who ruled from 531 to 579.  Literature from this time period indicates that by the year 600 chess was already an established pursuit of the Persian nobility.

Chess moved on to the Arabic world, probably becoming well known during the period from about 650 to 750.  It is the Arab world during the mid-ninth century that the oldest recorded works on chess theory come from.  In the year 988 Ibn an-Nadim mentions several players who had already authored books on chess.  During this early Islamic period, many writers not only detailed various chess strategies, but also went to elaborate lengths to produce moral justification for the game itself.  Since the Koran doesn't specifically mention chess, the religious status of the game was uncertain for a time, and it ran the risk of being banned along with other activities, such as gambling.  Chess pieces during this era were nonrepresentational, since Muslim law banned images.

Chess made its way to Europe via the Arabic world before the close of the first millennium.  Whether it came first to Spain or to Italy is unknown, and it quite possibly could have arrived in both places simultaneously.  It was in Europe that the nonrepresentational pieces were changed into the knights and other medieval images we are familiar with today.

Once in Europe, chess spread rapidly.  At first, the game was only played by clerics.  There are numerous examples of official literature from this time period, all banning chess, but clearly those were ineffective.

From the Church, chess spread to the nobility of Europe.  By the twelfth century, a description of knightly accomplishments listed "chess" along with riding, hawking, and verse writing.  The most common form of the game during these times was the "bare king," in which the winner successfully captured all of his opponent's pieces, leaving the king standing alone.  Checkmate was uncommon.

In its first five hundred years in Europe, chess changed very little.  It was primarily a social pastime rather than an intellectual exercise.  As a result, there were few theoretical or technical journals published on the game.

However, in the late 15th century there was a sudden reform in the rules that was quickly adopted throughout Europe.  These changes represented the single major shift in the flow of the game throughout its history.  One of the new rules permitted a pawn to advance two squares on its first move.  This had the effect of speeding up play without materially affecting the general tactics of the game.  The other changes were similarly fundamental:  The bishop was permitted to move further, giving it approximately the same strength as the knight; and the queen was transformed from a very weak piece (weaker than the king in today's game) to the strongest piece on the board.

A description of this new form of chess appears in a Spanish book by chess theorist Luis de Lucena, published in 1496.  Lucena's book contains eleven examples of openings and 150 problems almost evenly divided between the old form of chess and the new "queen's game" form of chess.  Another book published in 1512 in Italy, by Damiano, does not even mention the old form of chess, suggesting that the "queen's game" had completely conquered Italy by this time.

A Spanish priest named Ruy Lopez de Segura read Damiano's book and found it to be thoroughly inadequate, so he wrote his own.  His book, published in 1561, concentrated on opening theory and also introduced the term "gambit" to the world of chess.

During the Renaissance, the theory of chess progressed rapidly through most parts of Europe.  By the eighteenth century, the pursuit of chess had become rather bookish, and it grew in favor among the intellectuals.  The centers of chess activity during this period were England and France rather than Spain and Italy.  Chess became a popular pastime in coffee houses throughout Europe, and Slaughter's Coffee House in London and the famous Cafe de la Regence in Paris were two of the world's foremost hubs of chess activity.

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