The name “chess” illustrates the “mental stamina, psychology, tactics, methodology etc.” Chess, for many of us has always been an enigma. Just like a popular Japanese author, Kazuo Ishiguro said:
“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.”
Read here about Most Interesting chess players ever
Read some interesting facts:
1. Did 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.
2. The longest game of chess that is theoretically possible is 5,949 moves.
3. The first chessboard with alternating light and dark squares (as it appears today) was made in European 1090.
4. According to the America's Foundation for Chess, there are 169,518,829,100 ,544,000,000,00 0,000,000 (approximately 1.70x10 29) ways to play the first 10 moves of a game of chess. And they thought a computer would solve chess!
5. The longest tournament chess game (in terms of moves) ever to be played was Nikolić–Arsović, Belgrade 1989, which lasted for 269 moves and took 20 hours and 15 minutes to complete a drawn game.
6. There are 400 different possible positions after onemove each. There are 72,084 different possible positions after two moves each. There are over 9 million different possible positions after three moveseach. There are over 318 billion different possible positions after four moves each. The number of distinct 40-move games in chess is far 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 .
7. The new pawn move, where pawns were allowed to advance two squares on its first move instead of one, was first introduced in Spain in 1280.
8. The first chess game played between space and earth was on June 9, 1970 by the Soyez-9 crew. The game ended in a draw.
9. An old puzzle: If you put one grain of wheat on the first square of the chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth, and so on, how many grains of wheat do you need to put on the 64th square? The answer is 9,223,372,036,8 54,775,808 (approximately 9.22x10 18 ) grains of wheat. That's a lot of nutrition.
10. The folding chess board was invented by a priest who was forbidden to play chess. The priest found a way around it by making a folding chessboard. When folded together and put on a bookshelf, it simply looks like two books.
11. A computer called DeepThought became the first computer to beat an international grandmaster in November 1988, Long Beach, California.
12. The word "Checkmate" in Chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means"the King is dead."
13. Blathy, Otto (1860-1939), credited for creating the longest Chess Problem, mate in 290 moves.
14. The number of possibilities of a Knight's tour is over 122 million.
15. From the starting position, there are eight different ways to Mate in two moves and 355 different ways to Mate in three moves.
16. The new Pawn move, advancing two squares on its first move instead of one, was first introduced in Spain in 1280.
17. Dr. Emanuel Lasker from Germany retained the World Chess Champion title for more time than any other player ever: 26 years and 337 days.
18. In 1985, the Soviet player Garry Kasparov became the youngest World Chess Champion ever at the age of 22 years and 210 days.
19. 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 was on the team which broke the Nazi Enigma code.
