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Chessville
Chess
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The Mad Aussie's Chess Trivia Submit your trivia to the
Mad Aussie! Other Countries: The preliminary rounds of the 15th ICCF Correspondence Chess Olympiad features an "Isolated Country Players" team. The team is for players who live in a country that cannot field a full team. The ICP team has members from Algeria, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mongolia. Other Languages: A FIDE International Arbiter must not only have a complete and detailed knowledge of the laws and rules of the game, but must be able to speak one language (one of either French, German, English, Russian or Spanish) other than their native tongue. Well-Schooled: Moldovian GM Viktor Bologan, the surprise winner of the 2003 Dortmund tournament, graduated from the Moscow Sports University with a doctoral thesis on the preparation of top level chess players. Schooling Others: Between 1817 and 1819 , English player William Lewis played a series of matches in which he gave odds to his opponents. In all of the matches he had the White pieces in every game. Here is a summary of the results:
Christmas Congress: The first Hastings Christmas Chess Congress was held in 1920/21, and featured a 4 player round-robin, made of past winners and the present holder of the British championship. The tournament was won by FD Yates. Christmas Presents: There have been examples of grandmasters overlooking a checkmate in one move. Here are some examples: Gligoric v Book, Saltsjobaden Interzonal 1948; Smyslov v Florian, Moscow v Budapest match 1950; Bronstein v Gligoric, Moscow 1967. Chess and Music: In 1950, Vassily Smyslov auditioned for a place in the Bolshoi Opera, but was knocked back, despite having a fine baritone voice. While competing in the 1953 Neuhasen-Zurich candidates tournament, he found time in between rounds to sing operatic extracts on a Swiss radio station. Chess and Ballet: Max Harmonist, a minor German master who played in several tournaments in the 1880's and 1890's, was actually a ballet dancer by profession. Changed by Choice: The German Bundesliga chess league commenced in 1975. Originally there were four teams, representing the following regions in West Germany - North, South, West and South-West. In 1980 a first division was introduced, with teams representing individual cities. The regional teams were then put into a second division. The first division teams engage top local and international IM's and GM's to play for them. Changed by Necessity: The 3rd World ICCF World Correspondence Chess Championship (1956-62) was the only World Championship tournament that did not feature preliminary groups prior to the final. The ICCF made it an "invitational" tournament, featuring a player from each of the 5 ICCF "zones", as well as other players, whose participation was based on their previous CC records. The format was not a success, and every World Championship held since then has featured preliminary groups followed by a final. Banned Chess: Blindfold chess was "officially" banned in the former USSR from 1930 because the chess authorities believed that a player's mental health could be endangered by playing without site of the board. Banned Chessplayer: After leaving his native Czechoslovakia in 1972 and settling in West Germany, Ludek Pachman (1924-2003) became the subject of a "boycott" by Eastern European players, who would refuse to compete in tournaments in which he was entered. The "boycott" was broken in 1976, when the Eastern European players were forced to compete against him at the Manila Interzonal tournament. No Seconds: Of the 8 players who competed in the 2002 Einstein "Candidates" tournament in Dortmund, Michael Adams and Alexander Morozevich were the only 2 players who did not have the services of a "second" to help them prepare and analyse games. So how did they finish? Neither made it as far as the semi-finals of the event, which was ultimately won by Peter Leko. Second-Halves: Daniel Harrwitz (1823-1884) was one of the top players in the world in the 1850's. His reputation suffered because of his habit or taking "time off" in the middle of major matches, especially if he had just suffered a bad loss. Harrwitz took such "vacations" in the course of his matches against Anderssen in 1848, Williams in 1853, Lowenthal in 1853 and Morphy in 1858. Senior Strength: At the age of 57, Hungarian master Geza Marozcy undertook a chess playing tour of Europe. Between June 1927 and March 1928 he played 943 games in various exhibitions, with a total score of +825, -5, =113 (93.5%). Junior Precocity: The American 19th century player Napoleon Marache was a quick learner of the game. Three weeks after his first lesson from his tutor, he was giving the tutor odds of a rook. Taking A Break: Between August 1922 and November 1925, the only "serious" chess that Jose Capablanca played was to compete in the 1924 New York international tournament. Give Me A Break: In all of the game scores that have survived, there are no examples of Andre Philidor playing the Philidor's Defence as Black. Chess Problems: During the first round of the 1931 Bled international tournament, spectators created so much noise and distraction that the remainder of the tournament was held in a smaller hall, with spectators forbidden to smoke and make noise. Chess Politics: When FIDE was established in 1924, the USSR did not become a member, as it believed that FIDE was a "bourgeois" political organization. The USSR did not join FIDE until 1946.
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