"What's this piece called?"
"A Bishop. What is it in Spanish, Sophie?"
"Alfil"
"And in French, Agathe?"
"Fou"

Therein lies a story...

The old Arab form of chess had a piece called the elephant, which, unlike most elephants I know, could jump two squares at a time, diagonally. And 'al-fil' means the Elephant in Arabic (Pil in Persian).

But if you have a lump of stone, or wood, and you want to show that it is an elephant, you might carve two curving lines on it for tusks, or make two points on it to show the same.

I've been slow to tune in to what's available on places like YouTube for chess instruction, but here's a start, and I'll add to it over the while.

Comments and recommendations welcome; if there's an obvious gap I might have a go myself.
contact

 ID NAME                 Grd   |   1 
--------------------------------------
  1 Lorenz Hartmann       190  |  W12 
  2 Tim Paulden           185  |  B13 
  3 Kevin Hurst           183  |  W15 
  4 Dave Regis            180  |  B16 
  5 Paul O'Neill          180  |  W17 
  6 Chris Lowe            179  |  B18 
  7 Giles Body            163  |  W19 
  8 Matt Best             155  |  B20 
  9 Jeremie Poschmann     150  |  W21 
 10 Andrew Frangleton     147  |  B22 

Last week the juniors saw the game of Shogi played. It's the sort of chess played in Japan, and by our new friends Kaz and Hatzune. How is Shogi related to the sort of chess that we normally play?

When I first looked at the history of Western Chess, I thought that the original game was Chaturanga, a game played in India before 600AD. Chess as played in other countries seems to come from the Arab form of Chess called Shatranj. And that is what I used to tell people.