Interesting Facts About Chess

• Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid. The game is played by millions of people worldwide.Chess is believed to be derived from the Indian game chaturanga sometime before the 7th century.

• 1500 years:

The history of chess can be traced back nearly 1500 years, although the earliest origins are uncertain. The earliest predecessor of the game probably originated in India, before the 6th century AD; a minority of historians believe the game originated in China. From India, the game spread to Persia.

Wilhelm Steinitz

• Wilhelm Steinitz, the first World Champion, widely considered the "father of modernchess," extensively analyzed various double king-pawn openings (beginning 1.e4 e5) in his book The Modern Chess Instructor, published in 1889 and 1895.
• Actually, the longest possible chess game is 50*117 + 25 = 5875 moves long, because of the twenty-five move rule.
• The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. ... A player whose rating is 100 points greater than their opponent's is expected to score 64%; if the difference is 200 points, then the expected score for the stronger player is 76%.

1. Longest Game Possible

The longest game of chess that is possible is of 5,949 moves.

2. The Longest Game

The longest game lasted for 269 moves and ended in a draw.

3. The King is Dead

The word “checkmate” comes from the Arabic word “shah mat” which translates to “The king is dead” in English.

4. New Pawn Move

The new move where the pawn could move two steps instead of one was introduced in Spain in 1280.

5. World Chess Champion

A German named Dr. Emanuel Lasker retained the Champion title for the most time: 26 years and 337 days!

6. First Chess Board

The modern chess board as we see it today appeared first in Europe in 1090.

7. The Lying Priest

The folding Chess board was invented in 1125 by a Chess-playing priest. Since the Church forbids priests to play Chess, he hid his Chess board by making it to look like two books lying together.

8. Rookies

Players in their first year are called “Rookies”. This name came up from the last pieces of chess to move into action called “Rooks”.

9. English Book

The second book to be ever printed in English language was about Chess.

10.  One of the Computer Geniuses: Alan Turing

Alan Turing developed the first computer program for playing chess was developed in 1951. However, no computer was powerful enough to process it, so Turing tested it by doing the calculations himself and playing according to the results, taking several minutes per move.

11. Extraordinary Game

The first chess game between space and earth was in June, 1970 by the Soyez-9 crew. Though the game ended in draw, it sure did make headlines.

12. Possible Moves

Are you aware of the fact that the number of possible ways of playing the first four moves for both sides in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000?

15. Game of Thrones

Chess is also called the “Game of Kings” since for a very long time in the past, it was just played by the Nobel and Kings.

16. Check Mate!

The shortest number of moves to achieve checkmate is just two moves! One sequence is called “Fool’s mate runs” Thus, 1. g4 e5 and 2. f4 Qh4 checkmate.

17. Chess Connoisseur

The chess master to have won the World Championship in all three formats (knockout, tournament and match) is Vishwanathan Anand from India.