Chess (poem)

Chess (Polish: Szachy) is a poem written by Jan Kochanowski, first published in 1564 or 1565. Inspired by Marco Girolamo Vida's Scacchia Ludus, it is a narrative poetry work that describes a game of chess between two men, Fiedor and Borzuj, who fight for the right to marry Anna, princess of Denmark. The poem anthropomorphises the pieces, presenting the game as a battle between two armies, in a style reminiscent of battle scenes in the works of Homer and Virgil.

In 1912, Alexander Wagner reconstructed the game described in the poem, while Yuri Averbakh found that it has three possible endings in 1967.