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The Story of chess |
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Each game of chess |
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Means there's one less |
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Variation left to be played |
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Each day got through |
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Means one or two |
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Less mistakes remain to be made |
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Not much is known |
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Of early days of chess beyond a fairly vague report |
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That fifteen hundred years ago two princes fought |
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Though brothers, for a Hindu throne |
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Their mother cried |
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For no-one really likes their offspring fighting to the death |
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She begged them stop the slaughter with her every breath |
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But sure enough one brother died |
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Sad beyond belief |
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She told her winning son |
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You have caused such grief |
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I can't forgive this evil thing you've done |
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He tried to explain |
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How things had really been |
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But he tried in vain |
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No words of his could mollify the queen |
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And so he asked the wisest men he knew |
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The way to lessen her distress |
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They told him he'd be pretty certain to impress |
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By using model soldiers on |
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A checker board to show it was his brother's fault |
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They thus invented chess |
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Chess displayed no inertia |
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Soon spread to Persia, then west |
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Next the Arabs refined it, |
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Thus redesigned, it progressed |
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Still further yet |
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And when Constantinople fell in 1453 |
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One would have noticed every other refugee |
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Included in his bags a set |
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Once in the hands |
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And in the minds of leading figures of the Renaissance |
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The spirit and the speed of chess made swift advance |
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Through all of Europe's vital lands |
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Where we must record |
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The game was further changed |
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Right across the board |
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The western touch upon the pieces ranged |
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King and queen and rook |
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And bishop, knight and pawn |
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All took on the look |
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We know today, the modern game was born |
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And in the end |
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We see a game that started by mistake in Hindustan |
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And boosted in the main by what is now Iran |
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Become the simplest and most complicated pleasure |
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Yet devised for just the kind of mind who would appreciate |
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This well researched and fascinating yarn. |