Ideas, Openings & Improvement

World chess ran without a single governing body for over a century after its first recognisable clubs. Here is the week in 1924 Paris that finally changed that.

Thirty-six years after the informal legend, FIDE finally made "Grandmaster" an actual title, and had to decide who among chess history's best had earned it retroactively.

A Hungarian-American physics professor built a rating system in his spare time. Sixty years later it rates chess players, footballers, and esports competitors alike.

A World Champion mentioned, almost in passing, that a searchable game database would help his preparation. Forty years later, that offhand comment still shapes how every serious player studies.

The title has stayed the same for 140 years. Almost everything about how you actually earn the right to play for it has been rebuilt, more than once, usually after a crisis.

One Soviet official decided chess could raise the cultural level of the working class. What followed was the most successful state chess program the sport has ever seen.