40 Amazing Facts about Chess | Amazing Facts 4U
- Chess was in fact invented in India. It is believed to originate out of India during the Gupta empire.
- Chess made its way to the West in the 9 th century.
- The oldest recorded chess game in history is from the 900s, between a historian from Baghdad and his student.
- Chess is called the game of kings because for many centuries it was played primarily by nobility and the upper classes.
- Do you know the number of possible ways of playing the first four moves for both sides in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000?
- Amazingly there are approximately 1.70 x 10*29 ways to play the first 10 moves of a game of chess.
- There are in fact 400 different possible positions after one move each. It rises to 72,084 different positions after two moves each. The figure rises to over 9 million after three moves .
- Amazing fact is that the number of distinct 40-move games in chess is 10^41 times greater than the number of electrons in the observable universe. The number of electrons is approximately 10^79 , while the number of unique chess games is 10^120 which is known as Shannon number. However after the fifty-move rule , the number of possible positions has been reduced to 10^43.
- The longest game of chess that is theoretically possible is 5,949 moves.
- The shortest number of moves necessary to achieve checkmate from the beginning of the game is amazingly just two moves. One sequence is called fool’s mate runs thus. 1. g4 e5, 2. f4 Qh4 checkmate.
- From the starting position, there are eight different ways to Mate in two moves and 355 different ways to Mate in three moves.
- An opening is defined as a series of moves to start out a game, which can include many different sub variations. Amazingly there are well over 1,000 different openings, including variations.
- The number of possibilities of a Knight’s tour is over 122 million.
- The longest official chess game ever was I.Nikolic – Arsovic, Belgrade 1989, which ended in a draw after 269 moves (20 hours, 15 minutes).
- 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.
- The second book ever printed in the English language was in fact about chess!
- The new pawn move, where pawns were allowed to advance two squares on its first move instead of one, was first introduced first in Spain in 1280.
- Initially, the Queen could only move one square at a time, diagonally. Later, she could move two squares at a time, diagonally. It wasn’t until Reconquista Spain, with its powerful queen Isabella, that the Queen became the strongest piece on the board.
- Pawn promotion rules were limited up to 19th century when it was limited to a previously captured piece. Nowadays a pawn may be promoted to a knight, bishop, rook, or queen and there may be more than one queen now.
- The first chess game played between space and earth was on June 9, 1970 by the Soyez-9 crew which ended in a draw.
- In 1922, World Champion José Raúl Capablanca amazingly played 103 opponents simultaneously and won 102 of the games (with 1 draw).
- The world record for simultaneous chess exhibition was just set in 2009 by Bulgarian Grandmaster Kiril Georgiev. He played 360 games for more than 14 hours. He won 284 games, drawn 70 and lost 6 games.
- Blindfold chess is an impressive skill requiring a keen ability to see the board clearly in mind which can get difficult after many moves.
- In 1960, Koltanowski played 56 chess games blindfolded (with only 10 seconds a move) and won 50 and drew 6! Amazing fact was after the games were over, he could recite the complete moves from memory.
- There were amazing 72 consecutive Queen moves in the Mason-Mackenzie game at London in 1882.
- The record of moves without capture is of 100 moves during the Match between Thorton and M. Walker in 1992.
- A computer called Deep Thought became the first computer to beat an international grandmaster in November 1988, Long Beach, California. The computer Deep Blue was the first machine to overcome a reigning World Chess Champion in a match, when it defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997.
- The longest time for a Castling move to take place was the match game between Bobotsor vs. Irkovin 1966 after 46 moves.
- As late as 1561, Castling was two moves. You had to play rook on one move followed by king on the next move.
- The word “Checkmate” in Chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah Mat,” which means”the King is dead.”
- Blathy, Otto (1860-1939), credited for creating the longest Chess Problem, mate in 290 moves.
- Dr. Emanuel Lasker from Germany retained the World Chess Champion title for more time than any other player ever: 26 years and 337 days.
- In 1985, the Soviet player Garry Kasparov became the youngest World Chess Champion ever at the age of 22 years and 210 days.
- The first Chessboard with alternating light and dark squares appeared in Europe in 1090.
- The largest simultaneous displays usually take place in Cuba. In 2005 the previous record of 11,000 people playing against over 500 masters was broken with the new record standing at 13,500 people playing against over 600 masters.
- In 1561 Ruy Lopez de Segura, a Spanish priest, wrote a book which translated into English means “Book of liberal invention and the art of the game of chess”. It was the first complete study of the game. The Ruy Lopez opening is named after him as he was the first to analyse it in detail.
- Chessmaster Master Alekhine Nouri aged 7 years is the youngest FIDE Master in the world! (FIDE stands for Fédération Internationale des Échecs, which literally translates into World Chess Federation).
- Viswanathan Anand from India is in fact first player in chess history to have won the World Championship in all three different formats: knockout, tournament, and match.
- Amazingly in one of the games, both players had three queens each on board at the same time. They all stuck around for seven moves! The game was between Szalanczy and Nguyen, Budapest 2009 .
- Bobby Fischer, most famously known as the youngest grandmaster in chess history, received the title in 1957 at the age of 14. Another 15 years later, he took the world championship in 1972.
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