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