International Chess Day

The first chessboard withalternating light and dark squares (as it appears today) was made in Europein 1090. 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. As late as 1561, Castling was two moves. The folding chessboard 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 ona bookshelf, it simply lookslike two books. 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. The word "Checkmate" in Chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means"the King is dead."

The longest game of chess that is theoretically possible is 5,949 moves. 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. 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 , whilethe number of uniquechess games is 10^120. A computer called DeepThought became the first computer to beat an international grandmaster in November 1988, Long Beach, California.

The Federation Internationale des Echecs (FIDE) or World Chess Federation is an international organization that connects the various national chess federations around the world and acts as the governing body of international chess competition.

July 20th is the anniversary of the founding of FIDE in Paris, France in 1924.

Since 1966 on this day International Chess Day has been celebrated. FIDE, on its birthday wishes millions of chess admirers a wonderful Chess Day!

Source: fide.com | chess.com