A day of chess

All eyes are on the Games in Paris, where an estimated 10,000 athletes from more than 200 nations will compete. This comes 100 years after the Paris Olympics of 1924, a milestone event when the number of competing nations jumped from 29 to 44.

That same year, Fide, the international governing body of chess, (Federation Internationale des Echecs) was founded in the 9th arrondissement’s town hall by Pierre Vincent, the secretary of the French Chess Federation. An unofficial chess Olympiad took place alongside the athletic Olympics, though the first official Fide Olympiad was not until 1927. Those were sympathetic times for international cooperation – the League of Nations was founded at the Paris Peace Conference in 1920.

And so, in 2024, Fide comes to mark its own centenary. They shovelled out some corporate guff with ten goals for the next 100 years, and I fell asleep after reading the first three: ‘Global expansion and accessibility’, ‘Digital revolution’ and ‘Educational integration’. I’ll spare you the rest. But a more imaginative initiative took place on 20 July, which is designated as International Chess Day. Fide’s goal was to set a new Guinness World Record for the number of games of chess played across the globe in a 24-hour period.

This being a new event, there was no target to beat, but what number would you imagine was reached? I’m reminded me of those interview brainteasers like ‘How many piano tuners are there in the world?’ or ‘How many golf balls can you fit in an aeroplane?’ The chess games record was set at 7,284,970, so hurrah for that! It will make a fine pub quiz tiebreaker question.

I find it easier to wrap my head around that number with a bit of arithmetic – it’s 5,000 games finishing every minute. That’s quite a testament to the timeless global appeal of chess.