Emanuel Lasker was born in Berlinchen (now Barlinck, Poland as of 1945), the Prussian province of Brandenberg, on December 24, 1868. He was the second son of Adolf Lasker, a Jewish cantor in a synagogue. His mother was Rosalie Israelssohn. They al...
Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin (Tchigorin) was born November 12 (October 31 Old Style), 1850 in Gatchina near St Petersburg. In 1860, at the age of 10, he was an orphan. He learned to play in 1866 at the age of 16. His schoolteacher taught h...
Jose Raul Capablanca y Graupera was born on 19 November, 1888 in Havana, Cuba. His father was an army officer and Jose was his second son. Jose learned chess at age 5 by watching his father play. He defeated his father the first time they played. ...
Joseph Henry Blackburne was born on December 10, 1841 in Manchester, England. As a youth, he became an expert at checkers (draughts). His father was a temperance reformer who travelled all over Britain and Ireland, taking his son with him. It is i...
Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen was born in Breslau, Prussia (now Wroclaw, Poland) on July 6, 1818. He came from a poor family. He learned chess from his father in 1827 at the age of 9 and filled up his school books with chess diagrams. He lived with...
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp was a French chessplayer and renouwned artist. He was born in Blainville-Crevon, France on July 28, 1887 and died on October 2, 1968. He came from a family of artists and chess players. He had 4 brothers and 2 sisters. ...
At the beginning of World War II, world chess champion Alexander Alekhine (1892-1946) was living in France (he later moved to Portugal, but the Nazis refused to let his wife join him). When the Nazis came into power, he became in...
Paul Morphy was born on June 22, 1837 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He had two sisters, Mahrina and Helena, and a brother Edward. His father's nationality was Spanish, but he was of Irish origin. His mother was French. From the age of 8 ...
Alexander Alehine (1892-1946) was the 4th official world chess champion, after William Steinitz, Emamuel Lasker, and Jose Capablanca.Some sources say he was born on November 1, while other sources give October 31, 1892 (Halloween) as the dat...
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born on January 23, 1899 in New York City. He was the son of a noted Manhattan surgeon. His mother was was a popular illustrator. Humphrey probably learned chess in 1912. His father taught him chess during their stay ...
Robert James (Bobby) Fischer was born at 2:39 pm on March 9, 1943 in Chicago, Illinois (Michael Reese hospital) to Regina Wender Fischer Pustan (born in Switzerland of Jewish parents on March 31, 1913) and Hans-Gerhardt Fischer (born September 28,...
Rybka is the current World Champion... of computer chess that is! He stormed on to the scene in 2005 and has since won 2 championships. More information on the computer chess championships here: http://wwwcs.uni-paderborn.de/~IPCCC/ Rybka is...
