Chess secrets

1. The word “Checkmate” in Chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah Mat,” which means “the King is dead.”
2. The number of possibilities of a Knight’s tour is over 122 million.
3. The longest official chess game lasted 269 moves (I. Nikolic – Arsovic, Belgrade 1989) and ended in a draw.
4. The new Pawn move, advancing two squares on its first move instead of one, was first introduced in Spain in 1280.
5. The first Chessboard with alternating light and dark squares appears in Europe in 1090.
6. The worst performance by a player was Macleod of Canada who lost 31 games in the New York double-round robin of 1889.
7. In 1985, Eric Knoppert played 500 games of 10-minute Chess in 68 hours.
8. A Computer Program named Deep Thoughtbeat an International Grand Master for the first time in November 1988 in Long Beach, California.
9. There are well over 1,000 different openings, including variations within larger openings/defenses that one can learn.
10. . The second book ever printed in the English language was about chess!
11. The oldest recorded chess game in history is from the 900s, between a historian from Baghdad and his student.
12. About 600,000,000 (Six hundred million) people know how to play chess worldwide!
13. Chess began in India during the Gupta Empire, spreading to the Persian Sassanid Empire, and then to the Middle East after Muslims conquered Persia. From there, it spread to Europe and Russia.
14. In Shatranj, the predecessor to chess, the Queen was a minister or vizier, and still is in many languages.
15. In many languages, the Pawn is a foot soldier, but in German and Spanish, it’s a peasant or farmer, instead!

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