The first Chessboard with alternating light and dark squares appears in Europe in 1090.
Chess Knowledge..
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| 12 |
A boy gave General Rahl of the British Army a note from a spy that George Washington was about to cross the Delaware and attack. The general was so immersed in a Chess game that he put the note in his pocket unopened. There it was found when he was mortally wounded in the subsequent battle. |
| 13 |
During World War II, some of the top Chess players were also code breakers. British masters Harry Golombek, Stuart Milner-Barry and H. O'D. Alexander were on the team which broke the Nazi Enigma code. |
| 14 |
The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of Chess is 318,979,564,000. |
| 15 |
The first mention of Chess in America occurred in the year of 1641 in Esther Singleton's history of Dutch settlers. The first American Chess tournament was held in New York in 1843. |
| 16 |
As late as 1561, Castling was two moves. You had to play R-KB1 on one move and K-KN1 on the next move. |
| 17 |
During the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match in Rekjavik, the Russians linked Spassky's erratic play with Fischer's chair. The Icelandic organization put a 24-hour Police guard around the chair while chemical and x-ray tests were performed on the chair. Nothing unusual was found. |
| 18 |
Ray Charles, the legendary Genius of Soul, learned Chess in 1965 after being busted and hospitalized for heroin addiction. He learned Chess in the hospital where he went cold turkey. |
| 19 |
Rookies or, players in their first year, are named after the Rook in Chess. Rooks generally are the last pieces to be moved into action, and the same goes for Rookies. |
| 20 |
According to the America's Foundation for Chess, there are 169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,000 ways to play the first 10 moves of a game of Chess. |
| 21 |
The word "Checkmate" in Chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the King is dead." |
| 22 |
The first mechanical Chess Clock was invented by Thomas Wilson in 1883. Prior to that, Sandglasses were used. Sandglasses were first used in London in 1862. The present day push-button Clock was first perfected by Veenhoff in 1900. |
| 23 |
The first Computer program that played proper Chess was written at MIT by Alex Bernstein in 1959. The first Chess tournament in which the only players were Computer programs was held in New York in 1970. |
| 24 |
There were 72 consecutive Queen moves in the Mason-Mackenzie game at London in 1882. |
| 25 |
John Lennon and Ringo Starr played chess. Yoko Ono, Lennon's widow, is an avid chess player and supporter. |
| 26 |
BELLE, the first Computer awarded the title of U.S. Chess Master, in 1983. BELLE won the 1980 World Computer Championship in Linz, running on a PDP 11/23. BELLE was created by Ken Thompson and Joe Condon. |
| 27 |
Blathy, Otto (1860-1939), credited for creating the longest Chess Problem, mate in 290 moves. |
| 28 |
Albert Einstein was a good friend of World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker. In an interview with the New York Times in 1936 Albert said, "I do not play any games. There is no time for it. When I get through work I don't want anything which requires the working of the mind." He did take up Chess in his later life. |
| 29 |
The shortest game ending in mate after two moves: 1. g4 e6 or e5, 2. f3 or f4 Qh4 mate. |
| 30 |
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), wrote the first Chess article published in America: "The Morals of Chess." |
| 31 |
The Police raided a Chess Tournament in Cleveland in 1973, arrested the Tournament director and confiscated the Chess sets on charges of allowing gambling (cash prizes to winners) and possession of gambling devices (the Chess sets). |
| 32 |
The folding Chess board was originally invented in 1125 by a Chess-playing priest. Since the Church forbid priests to play Chess, he hid his Chess board by making one that looked simply like two books lying together. |
| 33 |
Anatoly Karpov, the first world champion to win the title without playing a Chess match. He got the title in 1975 when Fischer refused to defend his title. Anatoly became a Candidate Master at the age of 11, a Master at 15, an International Grandmaster at 19, and World Champion at 24. |
| 34 |
The number of possibilities of a Knight's tour is over 122 million. |
| 35 |
Labourdonnais and MacDonnell played 85 games, the largest number of games ever played successively in match conditions. Neither knew a word of the other's language. Labourdonnais spent his time spitting, cursing, singing, and laughing. MacDonnell spent up to an hour and a half to make a single move. |
| 36 |
In 1985, Eric Knoppert played 500 games of 10-minute Chess in 68 hours. |
| 37 |
Lewis Chessmen is the oldest known Chess pieces in existence, carved from walrus ivory. Seventy-eight pieces were found in a stone chamber in a sand bank on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis in 1831. They date back to 1150-1170. The pieces were discovered by a peasant who found a mysterious stone building buried under several feet of sand. The pieces reside in the British Museum and the National Museum in Edinburgh. The most striking piece is the Rook, which is the form of a captain afoot, rather than a castle. |
| 38 |
The longest Chess game is 269 moves (I. Nikolic - Arsovic, Belgrade 1989) which ended in a draw. |
| 39 |
Frank Marshall (1877-1944) was the first American to defeat a Soviet player in an international tournament in New York, 1924. He reigned as U.S. Champion for 30 years, but only defended his title once when he defeated Ed Lasker (5-4) in 1923. He was the first master to play more than 100 games simultaneously. |
| 40 |
The worst loss by a player was Macleod of Canada who lost 31 games in the New York double-round robin of 1889. |
| 41 |
The youngest Master was Jordy Mont-Reynaud at 10 years, 7 months (1994). The oldest player to become a Chess Master was Oscar Shapiro, at age 74. |
| 42 |
From the starting position, there are eight different ways to Mate in two moves and 355 different ways to Mate in three moves. |
| 43 |
Mephisto Portorose, is one of the strongest commercially available Chess microcomputers. In 1990 defeated Karpov, Huebner, and Bronstein in simultaneous exhibitions, won the West German blitz championship, and earned an International Master (IM) norm by scoring 7-4 in the Dortmond Open. |
| 44 |
The United States is the only country to defeat the USSR twice in the Chess Olympiad. |
| 45 |
There are 400 different possible positions after one move each. There are 72,084 different possible positions after two moves each. There are over 9 million different possible positions after three moves each. There are over 288 billion different possible positions after four moves each. The number of distinct 40-move games is far greater than the number of electrons in the observable universe. |
| 46 |
The new Pawn move, advancing two squares on its first move instead of one, was first introduced in Spain in 1280. |
| 47 |
In the 15th century, promotion to allow more than one Queen was considered improper because it symbolized adultery. In Spain and Italy in the 17th century, the Pawn could only be promoted to the rank of Queen. In France and Germany, promotion was limited to any piece which had been lost. In some countries a player could promote a Pawn to an enemy piece so as to force stalemate. The current law in Pawn promotion was established at the first International Tournament in 1851. |
| 48 |
The most popular PBS TV show aired was the 1972 Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky Chess match. |
| 49 |
The very first postage stamp depicting a Chess motif was issued in Bulgaria in 1947. |
| 50 |
The first child prodigy of Chess was Paul Morphy. He learned the moves at the age of 8 and beat the strongest players in New Orleans at 11. |
| 51 |
Yasser Seirawan (1960- ), first American to beat a reigning World Champion. He defeated Anatoly Karpov in 1982. |
| 52 |
The first Chess game between space and earth was played on June 9, 1970 by the Soyez-9 crew. The game ended in a draw. |
| 53 |
Kirk and Spock have played Chess three times on STAR TREK. Kirk won every game. |
| 54 |
David Strauss (1946- ), first International Master to lose to a Computer. In 1986, an experimental Fidelity machine defeated Strauss at the 1986 U.S. Open. |
| 55 |
The Anderssen-Kolisch match in 1861 was the first time a time-limit was used. An hour-glass gave each player 2 hours to make 24 moves. |
| 56 |
Dr. Emanuel Lasker from Germany retained the World Chess Champion title for more time than any other player ever: 26 years and 337 days. |
| 57 |
A Computer Program named Deep Thought beat an International Grand Master for the first time in November 1988 in Long Beach, California. |
| 50 |
The first child prodigy of Chess was Paul Morphy. He learned the moves at the age of 8 and beat the strongest players in New Orleans at 11. |
| 51 |
Yasser Seirawan (1960- ), first American to beat a reigning World Champion. He defeated Anatoly Karpov in 1982. |
I think these need some qualifiers.
Yasser Seirawan (1960- ), first American to beat a reigning World Champion. He defeated Anatoly Karpov in 1982.
This couldn't be true could it ?
Some interesting bits of info here, but some are pretty dubious.
Atos wrote:
Yasser Seirawan (1960- ), first American to beat a reigning World Champion. He defeated Anatoly Karpov in 1982.
This couldn't be true could it ?
Some interesting bits of info here, but some are pretty dubious.
I thought Spassky was reigning world champ when Fischer beat him.
Yes there's all knowledge are true....
ankitvish wrote:
The Chinese Emperor Wen-ti executed two foreign Chess Players after learning that one of the pieces was called 'Emperor.' He was upset that his title of Emperor could be associated with a mere game and forbade the game.
Emporer Wen-ti died in 604 AD. The first evidence of chess outside India is in Persia around 600 AD. It seems unlikely that Wen-ti would have seen chess or that he would have been upset that a piece was called Raja, after the Indian king.
redbirdpat wrote:
I thought Spassky was reigning world champ when Fischer beat him.
Not just that, but we can go back to 1932 when Dake beat Alekhine in Pasadena, and then back to when Pillsbury beat Lasker a few times, and probably an American beat WC Steinitz at one time or other as well.
Dec 15, 2010
0
#30
ankitvish wrote:
The 12th and last Inca Emperor of Peru, Atahualpa (1500-1533), who was imprisoned by Francisco Pizarro and the Spanish Conquistadors in 1533 in Cajamarca Peru, learned Chess by watching his guards play and before long, he was beating them all.
Ankitvish wins by sheer volume, content and persistence.
Although the way I heard it at the barber shop, was that Ata... was beaten (physically) by the guards; or was that eaten by the guards; or was that guarded by the creatons; or girded with croutons.............I'm sorry, what were we talking about??
Here's one I read recently.
After Kasparov became WCC, for the next eight years (yes, believe it or not), he either won, or tied for first in all chess tournaments he played in.
This is an amazing stat.
In 1987, Johan de koning (de Koning is Dutch fo "The King") started writing chess programs. The first version of "The King" was running on a 68000 processor, which had been introduced in mircrocomputer shortly before. Always trying to improve performance. The king was rewritten for the ARM-Family of RISC-processors and finally for the Intel 80X86-family.
Calculating your Chess Skill and Knowledge Rating
Here’s a fun exercise to determine your estimated skill and knowledge chess rating. While this is just for fun, it can prove helpful in determining how you should focus your chess training. If your knowledge rating is much higher than your skills rating, then you you need to focus your training towards skill building where if your skill rating is much higher than your knowledge rating, then you need to focus more on book learning. You should strive to have your knowledge and skill ratings at no more than 100 points apart.
Here’s how this works.
Formula: (Skill + Knowledge) / 2 = ELO
You need to plug in two of the numbers, and the two best to plug in are ELO and Skill. Ideally, you would use your USCF rating, but if you don’t have one, you can use your ICC of FICS rating, just remember to subtract 150 from your ICC or FICS rating so that it approximates an official USCF rating.
For your skills rating, I would use Igor Khmelnitsky’s Chess Exam and Training Guide to test your skills and get a rating approximation.
Example:
Skill rating: 1138 (based on Khelmenitsky’s book)
USCF ELO: 1340
Knowledge rating = K
(S+K) / 2 = ELO
(1138 + K) / 2 = 1340
1138 / 2 + k/2 – 1340 = 0
569 + K/2 – 1340 = 0
k/2-781 = 0
K=781 * 2
K= 1562
So my knowledge rating equals 1562, while my skill rating is approximately 1138 giving me an ELO of 1340. This means I have to focus on getting my skill rating to par with my knowledge rating in order to play at an estimated 1562 ELO rating.
The goal should be get my skill rating within the same ballpark as my knowledge rating (+/- 100 elo points) before focusing on adding more chess knowledge.
You should repeat this process every three months, but you will need to take the skill’s test again as well as play in a tournament in order to update your USCF rating and get an accurate reading.
1. Who was India’s first International Master?
2. Who was India’s first Grandmaster?
3. Who played the most USCF rated games in one year?
4. Who was the youngest player to win the British Chess Championship?
5. Who was the youngest player to win the US Chess Championship?
6. Who was the second youngest player to win the US Chess Championship?
7. Who was the first Indonesian Grandmaster?
8. Who was Norway’s first Grandmaster?
9. Who won the first chess oscar?
10. Who won the first Soviet Chess Championship?
11. What year did the first Russian Chess Federation form?
12. When was chess first mentioned in America?
13. Who published the first chess writing in America?
14. When was the first American chess tournament held?
15. Who won the first American Chess Congress?
16. Who won the first international chess tournament?
17. Who was the first Black grandmaster?
18. Who was won the British chess championship the most?
19. What was the first chess automaton?
20. What tournament introduced the chess clock?
21. What computer was first awarded the title of chess master?
22. Who is the goddess of chess?
23. Who is the patron saint of chess?
24. What is the longest running annual match in chess?
25. How many people play chess in the world?
26. Who was the first player to become a Grandmaster without first becoming an International Master?
27. When was the first chess club organized?
28. When was the first newspaper chess column published?
29. When was the first computer to play a proper game of chess?
30. Who won the first world computer championship?
31. Who designed the Staunton pattern chess pieces?
32. What computer won the first state championship?
33. Who was the oldest competitive grandmaster?
34. Who was the first official British chess champion?
35. Who was the first US chess champion?
36. When was FIDE founded?
37. Who was the first FIDE president?
38. What is the record for most games played simulaneously blindfolded?
39. What is the Fredkin Prize?
40. Who won the Fredkin Prize?
41. Who was the first woman to achieve the men’s grandmaster title?
42. Who was the first woman to take first place at a “men’s” chess tournament?
43. Who were the original grandmasters of chess?
44. Who was the first U.S. woman to acieve a master’s rating?
45. What was the first major tournament after World War II?
46. What player has won the US and the USSR chess championship?
47. Who was the first Afercan-American chess master?
48. What is the oldest and longest running tournament in the world?
49. Who won the first US Senior Open?
50. Who was the first Dean of American Chess?
51. What country has the highest per capita chess population in the world?
52. Who won the first World Junior Championship?
53. Who has won more chess tournaments than any other person?
54. Who was the first British player to achieve a FIDE Grandmaster norm for OTB chess play?
55. Who introduced the Swiss System pairing to the United States?
56. How many tournaments did Paul Morphy participate in?
57. Who was the oldest player to qualify for a World Championship Candidates match?
58. Who was the first British player to get an OTB Grandmaster title?
59. When did the US Chess Federation (USCF) form?
60. Who are the only players who have a plus record against Bobby Fischer?
61. What was the strongest tournament ever held?
62. Who won the strongest tournament ever held?
63. Who won chess championships of Paris, London, New York, and Chicago?
64. What was the first magazine devoted entirely to chess?
65. Who was the first Soviet Grandmaster to immigrate to Israel?
66. What was the first English newspaper to publish a chess column?
67. Who was the first American to win an official world championship?
68. Who invented the demonstration chess board?
69. What is the oldest chess club in Britain?
70. Who was the first Italian grandmaster?
71. Who was the first American to defeat a Soviet player in international competition?
72. Who is the youngest player to gain a master’s rating?
73. Who has played in more US Opens than any other player?
74. What is America’s longest running tournament?
75. Who became the first grandmaster of over-the-board (OTB) chess and correspondence chess?
76. What university was the first to have a chess club?
77. Who won the Briish chess championship more than any other player?
78. Who issued the first chess stamp?
79. Who invented the pocket chess set?
80. Who is the oldest player ever to win a national chess championship?
81. Who won the first world correspondence chess championship?
82. What was the first international sports event after World War II?
83. When did the first international rating list appear?
84. Who was the first British player to be awarded the title of Grandmaster?
85. Who was the first president of FIDE?
86. Where was the first Interzonal tournament held?
87. Who has the largest private chess library in the world?
88. Who was the first American to beat a reigning world champion?
89. Who was the youngest player to qualify for the British Chess Championship?
90. Who was the first official US Chess Champion?
91. Who was the first President of the US Chess Federation?
92. When was the first telegraph chess match played?
93. When was the first telephone chess game played?
94. Where was Paul Morphy’s father born?
95. Who was nicknamed the anonymouse Modenese?
96. What year was the first American chess book published?
97. What year was the first authenticated correspondence match played?
98. Who were the Pleiades?
99. Who defeated Paul Morphy more than any other player?
100. Who was known as Alter?
101. How many pieces were discovered that are now known as the Lewis chessmen?
102. Who designed the Staunton chessmen?
103. What was the first chess magazine?
104. Who was the first master to suggest a time limit in chess?
105. When was the first known photograph of a chess player taken?
106. Who invented the first chess clock?
107. Who won the first British chess championship?
108. Who wrote the first US chess column?
109. When was the first organized chess event in the US?
Please Post Answer If we know(any question)
Hot tip: To improved your chess Skill
One of the best ways to expand your chess knowledge is to draw from the experience of the masters! Memorize grandmaster games and seek to understand the moves to the best of your ability. This is how you could go about:
- Find an annotated game played between 2 strong grandmasters – ideally not more than 40 moves.
- www.chessgames.com is a great site to find high level annotated games.
- Play through the game quickly once to get a general idea of how the game went.
- Play through the game a second time (slowly) and try to understand the moves yourself.
- Study the annotations given by the master and compare it with your thoughts.
- Memorize (and understand) the complete game till you can easily play it out from start to finish.
- Start your personal collection of memorized games, including games featuring your preferred openings and/or preferred players. (Capablanca’s games are particularly instructive.)
- Play the games out occasionally to ensure you remember them (you could even do this in your mind if you are up for the challenge).
Gomer_Pyle wrote:
ankitvish wrote:
The Chinese Emperor Wen-ti executed two foreign Chess Players after learning that one of the pieces was called 'Emperor.' He was upset that his title of Emperor could be associated with a mere game and forbade the game.
Emporer Wen-ti died in 604 AD. The first evidence of chess outside India is in Persia around 600 AD. It seems unlikely that Wen-ti would have seen chess or that he would have been upset that a piece was called Raja, after the Indian king.
This is a (probably apocryphal) fact about xiangqi; whatever the case, the king equivalents are known as generals.
The longest time recorded for a Chess player to make a move, goes to the International Grand Master Trois from Brazil with 2 hours and 20 minutes on the 7th move.