Answers: A Political History of Chess

Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state in southern India played host to the 44th Chess Olympiad after the International Chess Federation (FIDE) took hosting rights away from Moscow following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Chennai’s tryst with chess started with India’s first international master Manuel Aaron. The Soviet Cultural Centre in the city teamed up with Aaron to set up a chess club in 1972, as the Fischer-Spassky contest was driving interest in the game. The club named after former world champion Mikhail Tal nurtured future world champion Viswanathan Anand among others. While the Tal Chess Club was shut following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chennai continues to be India’s chess hub.

Global geopolitics made its way into Chennai this month through the FIDE leadership contest. Arkady Dvorkovich, a former Russian deputy prime minister was re-elected as president, defeating Ukrainian grandmaster Andrii Baryshpolets. Dvorkovich has played a delicate balancing act over the war. Earlier this year, teams from Russia and its ally Belarus were banned from international competitions.

Answers

1) This Hungary-born American taught physics and astronomy at Marquette University, Wisconsin from 1935 to 1965. For what contribution to chess is he best known?

Arpad Elo who devised chess’ Elo rating system for players.

2) She was a teenager in 1990 when she helped her team win gold in the Women’s Chess Olympiad. That was the last women-only tournament she played in. Since then, she’s played in the Chess Olympiad along with men multiple times and her country won silver medals in 2002 and 2014. She is the only woman to make it to the top ten in chess so far. Who and which country?

Judit Polgar and Hungary. The Polgar sisters, Susan, Sofia and Judit powered Hungary to gold in the 1988 and 1990 Women’s Chess Olympiads. Judit Polgar became the youngest grandmaster, man or woman, at 15 in 1991 (Bobby Fischer had held the previous record). More here, here, here and here.

Susan Polgar, the eldest among the sisters, won the women’s world championship in 1996. She was the first woman to qualify for the Men’s Zonal World Chess Championship in 1986, when she was 17, but she was not allowed to compete. In 1991 she became the first woman to get the grandmaster title under the standards established for men (Judit Polgar secured the GM title a few months later).

The only woman in the top 100 now is China’s Hou Yifan. The New Yorker’s profile of Hou, including a bigger picture of women in chess is worth a read.

3) How did the island of Sveti Stefan in Montenegro gain international attention through chess in 1992 even as conflict was raging elsewhere in a splintering Yugoslavia?

The Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky rematch took place in Sveti Stefan. Fischer defeated Spassky but never played competitively again.

Fischer faced legal trouble in the U.S. for violating economic sanctions on Yugoslavia. In 2004 Fischer was detained in Japan but eventually travelled to Iceland, which gave him citizenship.

4) Mir Sultan Khan was the first from undivided India to make a mark in international chess in the 20th century but he was not formally given the grandmaster title. Who was the first from South Asia to become a grandmaster in chess?

Niaz Murshed from Bangladesh became a grandmaster in 1987. Viswanathan Anand became India’s first GM a year later.

5) This pioneering figure in the art world had a lifelong fascination with chess. He represented France in multiple chess olympiads including the first unofficial one in 1924. He designed the poster for the French chess championship in 1925. In 1932 he co-wrote a book on chess, Opposition and Sister Squares are Reconciled. Who?

Marcel Duchamp. More here and here

6) Bobby Fischer was invited to this country to play a series of ‘Beat Bobby Fischer’ matches in 1967. In 1974 Eugene Torre from this country became the first from Asia to become a grandmaster. A chess boom here continued through the 1970s as it hosted the world championship in 1978. Viswanathan Anand, India’s first grandmaster and future world champion, lived in this country at the time as his father was posted there. Which country?

Philippines. More about Eugene Torre, the first chess grandmaster from Asia here and here. More on the 1970s chess boom in the Philippines here. A crucial figure was Florencio Campomanes, a player turned administrator who headed the Philippines Chess Federation in the 1970s and went on to head FIDE from 1982 to 1995. Popularly known as ‘Campo’, he produced and hosted a TV show on chess from 1973 to 1982 (viewers included Viswanathan Anand who briefly lived in Manila as a child).

Campomanes built up a friendship with Bobby Fischer and worked closely with dictator Ferdinand Marcos as the Philippines offered $5 million to host the aborted world championship clash between Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov in 1975. But the Philippines did get to host the world championship in 1978, a clash wilder than Fischer vs Spassky in 1972. More on that in the next question.

As for Ferdinand Marcos, hosting chess’ marquee competition and befriending Bobby Fischer were among several high-profile steps to boost his country’s standing on the world stage after declaring martial law in 1972. Other events included the Miss Universe pageant in 1974 and the ‘Thrilla in Manila’ boxing bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in 1975.

7) While Bobby Fischer gave FIDE and organisers a hard time in 1972 by first threatening not to show up and then haggling over playing conditions, another world championship match was even wilder, starting with the positioning of each player’s chair. The Soviet contender hired a parapsychologist and his opponent alleged that yogurt delivered to him on the board contained a cognitive stimulant. The opponent was a Soviet defector whose eligibility to play was questioned by the USSR. He in turn wore mirror sunglasses to unsettle his rival and practised yoga with followers of the Ananda Marga sect. Who were the two contenders?

Anatoly Karpov (Soviet Union) and Viktor Korchnoi (Soviet defector and later Swiss citizen). Korchnoi, world number two behind Soviet establishment favourite Karpov defected in 1976. More about the bitter battle in Baguio City, Philippines in 1978 here, here, here, here, here and here. You can see Korchnoi’s mirrored sunglasses here.

The Associated Press video below shows two American Ananda Marga members guiding Korchnoi in yoga. The sect was notorious at the time for attacks on Indian government offices abroad. Korchnoi’s yoga trainers were out on bail after being convicted of attempting to murder an Indian embassy staffer in the Philippines.

In 2009 Korchnoi won the Swiss championship at the age of 78, becoming the oldest to win a national title. Korchnoi died in 2016. Tributes here and here.

8) He was a world champion in chess during the 1930s and the author of several chess books. He earned a PhD in mathematics and was a professor at Tilburg University. He took a keen interest in computer programming, played a key role in bringing a computer to his university for the first time and headed the new Computing Center at the university during the 1960s. The next decade saw him as FIDE President, a tumultuous period of navigating the Cold War that involved the Fischer-Spassky contest and boycott of the 1976 Chess Olympiad. Who?

Max Euwe from the Netherlands. More here. More on the Fischer-Spassky contest in 1972 and Euwe’s role as FIDE chief here and here. Euwe stood firm on Israel’s Haifa hosting the 1976 Olympiad despite a boycott by the Soviet bloc and Arab nations. He also rebuffed Soviet efforts to bar defectors from FIDE events, especially Viktor Korchnoi.

Another former world champion is now holding a key administrative role in FIDE. Viswanathan Anand was elected deputy president in Chennai during the Chess Olympiad.

9) The 1976 Chess Olympiad was boycotted by the Soviet bloc as well as several other countries. The U.S. won the men’s event in a vastly depleted field. Which city was the host?

Haifa, Israel. More here and here. The Soviet bloc joined a boycott by Arab states and only 48 teams took part. During the event, apartheid South Africa was controversially readmitted by FIDE, with the western world dominating the vote due to the boycott. The Soviet Union pushed for a more representative vote the next year and South Africa was thrown out again.

Libya under Colonel Muammar Gaddafi organised a rival chess Olympiad in 1976 featuring many of the boycotting nations.

10) This capital city hosted the world chess championship in 2004, one in a series of steps as the country courted rehabilitation in the western world. But it all crumbled in 2011. The head of FIDE visited the longtime leader in the capital as war raged and they were shown playing chess. But ‘chess diplomacy’ did not help the leader’s fortunes and he was toppled. Which city/country?

Tripoli, Libya. In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Libya agreed to destroy its chemical weapons and halt its nuclear plans in December 2003. In March 2004 British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Libya in what’s known as ‘Deal in the Desert’.

11) Which country won the gold medal at the Chess Olympiad for the first time in 2004, ahead of Russia who took silver?

Ukraine. That Ukrainian team included a 14-year-old Sergey Karjakin, who had become the world’s youngest grandmaster at 12. The Crimea-born Karjakin shifted allegiance to Russia in 2009. This March, he was banned from competition for six months for his vocal support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine won the women’s Chess Olympiad gold in Chennai, its second after 2006.

12) A place called Chess City hosted the Chess Olympiad in 1998, the women’s world championship in 2004 and the world championship in 2006. Where is it located and who was behind the creation of Chess City? (looking for a specific region in Russia)

Russia’s Republic of Kalmykia, the only part of Europe with a Buddhist majority. More on Chess City here.

Kalmykia was headed by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov from 1993 to 2010, who once claimed he had been abducted by aliens and taken aboard their spaceship. He headed FIDE from 1995 to 2018, defeating Anatoly Karpov in 2010 and Garry Kasparov in 2014. Ilyumzhinov was in Iraq in 2003 meeting Saddam Hussein and his son Uday just before the U.S.-led attacks began. In 2011 he was in the Libyan capital playing chess with Muammar Gaddafi during the dictator’s final months.

13) Chess became popular in this part of the world in the 1960s thanks to a native becoming the world champion. Starting in 2006, this country has won the men’s gold at the Chess Olympiad three times. In 2004 the Defence Minister took charge of the national chess federation. He remained at the helm as he ascended to the presidency and made the sport a mandatory part of the school curriculum. Name the country.

Armenia. The former President and Chess Federation head is Serzh Sargsyan. More on chess in Armenia’s schools here. The first Armenian to be the world champion, Tigran Petrosian, inspired a chess boom. In 1963 thousands watched every move relayed via telegraph to a giant board in the capital Yerevan, as Petrosian outclassed Mikhail Botvinnik.

Garry Kasparov was born to a Russian Jewish father and Armenian mother in Baku, Azerbaijan. Kasparov left Baku in 1990 as the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh worsened into war.

Armenia won silver in the open Chess Olympiad in Chennai, despite their top player Levon Aronian shifting to the U.S. in 2021. Aronian represented the U.S. but did not show up when his new country played against Armenia. More here and here.

14) The country in the previous question boycotted the Chess Olympiad in 2016. Why?

The host city was Baku, Azerbaijan

15) Nona Gaprindashvili was the first woman grandmaster and became the women’s world champion in 1962. Her success sparked a chess boom among women in her native region. In 1978 she was finally beaten in the world championship by a player from the same region, later an independent country. Which country?

Georgia. More here. Fellow Georgian Maia Chiburdanidze, a high school student, defeated Nona Gaprindashvili in 1978 to become world champion at the age of 17. She held on to the title until 1991.

16) Why did Nona Gaprindashvili sue Netflix in 2021? Earlier this year Netflix lost its bid to dismiss the lawsuit.

The Queen’s Gambit falsely referred to Nona Gaprindashvili as a “female world champion, who has never faced men”. More here, here, here and here.

17) Last month Magnus Carlsen announced he would not defend his world championship title. He said the only opponent who would motivate him to compete was the Iran-born Alireza Firouzja, who now represents France. Why did Firouzja, the youngest to cross 2800 rating points, leave Iran?

Alireza Firouzja was losing rating points and facing tournament bans due to Iran’s refusal to compete against Israeli players. For years FIDE and tournament organisers had ensured Israel-Iran clashes were avoided, but the world chess body has now clamped down on any refusal to play an opponent on political grounds. Firouzja now represents France. More here, here and here.

18) Who was the winner against Garry Kasparov on May 11, 1997, making history in a six-game match?

IBM’s Deep Blue computer. More here

19) The world championship match organised by the short-lived Professional Chess Association in 1995 between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand was held on the 107th floor of which building in the U.S.?

World Trade Center. More here and here.

20) Wanted by the U.S. for defying sanctions on Yugoslavia in 1992, Bobby Fischer was arrested in Japan in 2004 on charges of travelling on an invalid passport. Another country granted him citizenship in 2005, allowing him to travel there. He lived there until his death in 2008. Which country? (hint: connected to 1972 world championship)

Iceland. Iceland’s capital Reykjavik hosted the Fischer-Spassky contest in 1972. More here, here and here.