My First Ever Game of Chaturanga | How Chess was Played 1000 Years Ago

In this video, I play my first ever game of Chaturanga against IM Levy Rozman (@GothamChess).
This was originally streamed on our Twitch Channels:
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Chaturanga is an older form of chess with different rules that was played 1,000 years ago. Learn more about Chaturanga here:
Play Chaturanga (along with other variants) here:

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Eric Rosen
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404 Comments

  1. This video is filled with out of context potential lmaoo

  2. Broadbull, Enabler of Uncounted Combos says:

    xD the "let's do something more fun than Chaturanga" at the end

  3. Update for Chess is required
    [ ] accept
    [ ] not now

  4. Chess rules right now is the best. Queen was so useless back then and bishop who can jump on a pawn but can only take 2 squares? What?

  5. "Category: Gaming: Chess: 2005" ok so this is completely wrong in 2 ways

  6. I wonder if this is why queens always match the color of the square they start on instead of kings

  7. Isn’t the black king supposed to start on d8 in this variant?

  8. I mean, yeah. This is objectively bad game design, since none of the pieces can really do anything. Also those "bishops" are useless.

  9. I think I know how I would improve this:

    Firstly the opening is too slow. Give the pawns the option to move two squares on their first move.

    Bishops should be able to move diagonally as many spaces as they want, but can't jump any more.

    The queen should be a power piece, being able to move in any of the eight directions as many spaces as it wants.

    Rooks, Knights and Kings are fine. However with the more aggressive pieces on the board, the king should have the option to move two spaces and the corresponding room to come to its other side. You can only do this if the king and room haven't moved, and the king doesn't move into, out of, or through check. I think this balances this defencive resource.

    Finally one more suggestion is the ability to take a pawn out the next turn with your own pawn if it moves two spaces to avoid capture. It's as if your pawn is intefeering in the movement of the pawn, capturing it before it gets up two squares. This can only be done the next move however.

  10. I enjoy watching you and @GothamChess together.

  11. these rules are incredibly similar to chinese chess, i feel
    like the bishop only moving over obstructions
    and 1 square diagonal queens

    almost all types of chess are descendants of caturanga anyways

  12. Wait was this this actual chess from 1000 years ago?

  13. Eric kind of fail to realize he couldn't do mate without the king defending both queens. This queens can't defend each other

  14. I don’t understand why they named this chess mode what they did it’s not really an accurate name for it.

  15. Some parts of this really remind me of Chinese chess. Like the bishops moving two squares diagonally (same as the elephants, except they can’t jump over pieces) and the queen moving one square diagonally (like the uh things next to the generals)

  16. i know what a nice challenge would be: Rosen with chataranga pieces against our 800 elo asses with normal pieces 😀

  17. They made so many blunders… He could have taken queens very easily

  18. so basically in year 3000 knights will be able to choose any square in their range

  19. This game would need polygamy to be balanced. As in multiple queens.

  20. So glad they buffed the Queen and Bishop in later updates!

  21. It’s pretty funny that the king is worse than a pawn in normal chess but in the original it’s a better attacking piece than the pawn, queen, and bishop.

  22. I was so mad that you didn’t trade bishop for a queen because if he only has a white queen and a king you can never be in check position if you keep your king on a black square. I don’t know if that s clean i’m no english speaker

  23. me seeing levy's rating is 1430 knowing that i'm only a couple hundred points lower: i am GM worthy

  24. So endgame in this variant becomes borderline checkers.

  25. "Wow that was a good move! "
    "Thanks"
    IM's everyone

  26. 2:32 fun mathematical fact: for simple parity reasons, Eric would've never been able to fianchetto his bishop, no matter how many times he tried to "triangulate".

    Also, you'd need four bishops to be able to access all the squares with bishops. The concept of color complex weakness would then have to be replaced by something a tad more sophisticated. What a weird variant 😄

  27. It's funny us average chess players actually have an advantage playing this for the first time over them, because they are just much more hard-wired to how the pieces work. I mean, you can see Levy still struggling with the queen 15 minutes in.

  28. lololol i hope its your brain…. well yeah its definitely my brain 12:00 ish lol

  29. No "Oh no my queen" for Eric Rosen in this one😂😂😂

  30. Also 1,000 years ago. "And now after the first game we played. We need to make some rule changes so this game can end."

  31. Chaturanga is the precursor of CHESS…it is an ancient SANSKRIT word…Thank You🙏.

  32. 15:38
    The 50-move Rule (if 50 moves are made without capturing any pieces or moving any pawns, the game is a draw) was introduced in 1561 by Ruy Lopez.
    Chaturanga was invented in the 6th century so no, it wasn't even around lol probably had to implement it though or the games would last forever.

  33. Fun fact: in Arabic chess is still called "Chaturang" 🙂

  34. Queens are like pawns.
    Bishops are like Houdini.
    Rooks are like Superman.
    That's Chaturanga in a nutshell.

  35. "The future is basically the future's present moment"

    – IM Eric Rosen

  36. ancient Chaturanga players be like: lol look at these noobs

  37. "At some point we're going to go back to normal chess I think"
    Reaches the end game with none of the normal pieces.

  38. Queens were called Advisors/Ferz' back then, Bishops were called Elephants/Alfils

  39. I'd reckon that the bishops and queens were meant to be defensive pieces (which is similar to the role of the elephants and advisers from Xiangqi)
    You should develop the knights and rooks as attacking pieces in the early game

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