Chess’s origins can be traced back nearly 1500 years to its earliest known forerunner, chaturanga. India’s prehistory is a matter of conjecture. It spread from India to Persia. Following the Arab invasion and conquest of Persia, the Muslim world adopted chess, which spread to Spain and the rest of Southern Europe. By around 1500 CE, the game had roughly evolved into its current form. From the late 18th century to the 1880s, “Romantic chess” was the dominant playing style. Chess games during this time period emphasized quick, tactical man-oeuvres over long-term strategic planning. The Romantic era of play was followed by the Scientific, Hyper-modern, and New Dynamism eras. Modern chess tournament play began in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the first official World Chess Championship was held in 1886. The twentieth century saw significant advances in chess theory as well as the formation of the World Chess Federation. In the famous Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov match in 1997, an IBM supercomputer defeated Garry Kasparov, the then-world chess champion, ushering the game into an era of computer dominance.