Checkmate

London, 1851. In a smoke-filled cafe, a modest Prussian mathematics professor sacrifices his queen, both rooks, and a bishop to mount a final assault with three minor pieces. The Immortal Game is born. One hundred and sixty-six years later, an artificial neural network learns chess from scratch in four hours -- and reinvents the game with a poetry no one had imagined.

Between these two moments, twelve games shook the board -- and the world.

Checkmate tells the story of these legendary encounters as great works of historical journalism. This is not a technical manual: it is an adventure story where sixty-four squares become a mirror of our civilization.

The 12 games

1. The Immortal Game -- Anderssen vs Kieseritzky, London 1851
   Romantic audacity in the age of the Crystal Palace
2. The Opera Game -- Morphy vs Duke of Brunswick, Paris 1858
   An American genius humbles European aristocracy
3. Rubinstein's Immortal -- Rotlewi vs Rubinstein, Lodz 1907
   Beauty in its purest form, on the eve of a world in turmoil
4. The End of the Aristocracy -- Botvinnik vs Capablanca, Netherlands 1938
   Soviet science triumphs on the eve of war
5. The Game of the Century -- Byrne vs Fischer, New York 1956
   A 13-year-old prodigy stuns the chess world
6. The Match of the Century -- Fischer vs Spassky, Reykjavik 1972
   The Cold War played out on 64 squares
7. The Duel of the Century -- Karpov vs Kasparov, Moscow 1985
   Ice against fire at the twilight of the USSR
8. The King Walk -- Short vs Timman, Tilburg 1991
   The king crosses the board in the boldest march in history
9. Man vs Machine -- Kasparov vs Deep Blue, New York 1997
   The day artificial intelligence defeated the world champion
10. Kasparov's Immortal -- Kasparov vs Topalov, Wijk aan Zee 1999
    The greatest sacrifice of the 20th century
11. The Queen Beats the King -- Polgar vs Kasparov, Moscow 2002
    A woman defeats the greatest player in history
12. The Age of the Centaur -- AlphaZero vs Stockfish, London 2017
    Artificial intelligence reinvents chess in four hours

This book is for you if...

• You love history, geopolitics, and extraordinary destinies
• You are curious about chess without being a player (yet)
• You are a chess enthusiast who wants to rediscover the great games from a narrative angle
• You are interested in artificial intelligence and its impact on human creativity

No prior knowledge of chess is required. Every technical concept is clearly explained. Every game is told from first move to last, like a thriller. A glossary at the end of the book defines all terms.

Interactive: QR codes in each chapter let you replay the games online on Lichess, move by move, at your own pace.

From London to Reykjavik, from Moscow to Wijk aan Zee, from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to Google DeepMind's servers -- open this book, and let History unfold on the chessboard.