Chapter 33 Playing chess in the third quarter

Playing chess is an ancient chess game played at the end of the Western Han Dynasty.It was once popular in the Eastern Han Dynasty.Regarding playing chess, there are records in "Xijing Miscellaneous Notes", Liang Ji wrote a volume of "Tanqi Jing", and Cai Yong wrote "Fu on Playing Chess". As for how to play chess, according to Handan Chun's "Art Book", two players play against each other, with six black and white pieces each.The chess game is similar to the Cuju court at that time, with six pieces on each side, symbolizing the six-a-side football system at that time.

Emperor Wen of Wei liked to play chess very much, and he was very skilled, and wrote an "Fu on Playing Chess".From the sentence "first vertical 28" in the Fu, we can know that in the Three Kingdoms period, the number of chess pieces increased from six to eight on each side.In the Tang Dynasty, playing chess was still very popular, and many poets wrote poems about playing chess, such as Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Li He, Wei Yingwu, etc. were good at playing chess.According to Liu Zongyuan's "Preface to Chess", in the Tang Dynasty, the number of chess pieces increased from eight to 12 for each side.Both sides chess pieces are distinguished with two kinds of colors of red and black.The chessboard is made of wood, with a bulge in the middle, generally two feet square, and shaped like a raspberry.At its peak is a small pot with slightly raised corners. "Mengxi Bi Tan" said that there is a stone bureau on the Buddhist hall of the famous Kaiyuan Temple, which is a relic of the Tang Dynasty.

In the Song Dynasty, perhaps due to the special prosperity of chess, playing chess suddenly disappeared, and its moves have been lost since then.