 "Photo: Chi Brown/Echo staff photographer")
N.C. Central University welcomes its first chess club ever — The Dark Knights.
The Dark Knights is a membership organization that aims to increase the understanding of the game of chess.
According to Dark Nights founder and president Theophilius Craw-ford, a business administration junior, he got the idea for starting the club while playing with students around campus.
"It was not easy starting a chess club," he said. "There were many procedures ... but it was all worth it."
According to Crawford, chess goes back as far as 600 A.D. after originating in India.
The earliest precursor of modern chess is a game called Chaturanga, which flourished in India in the 6th century.
The game reached Western Europe and Russia by the 9th century and became widespread by the 15th century.
At that time it developed into the game everyone now recognizes with a board game containing 64 squares.
Each player begins the game with 16 pieces, including a king, a queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns.
The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king.
Crawford, a New Yorker, said that he first fell in love with chess at the age of 20 after picking up a book in the Brooklyn public library.
Describing his love for the game he said: "It's the aspect of thinking. It keeps me thinking all the time."
After teaching himself the game he decided that he wanted to share.
He has now been teaching chess, off and on, for about 12 years.
He was hired by the Brooklyn's housing authority and by the Board of Education to teach chess to disadvantaged kids and most recently, the parks and recreation department in Greensboro.
"Chess tends to help measure academic improve once you start playing," he said.
Crawford's overall goal is to eventually, overtime turn this club into a winning team.
"Students should definitely join, especially if you can not play," said nursing freshmen Mykey Westbrook, who described chess as "addictive."
The Dark Knights, which now has 12 members, meets Fridays in room 104 of the Alfonso Elder Student Union at 2 p.m.
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