New Guinness World Record: Over seven million chess games played in one day!
On International Chess Day, July 20, a monumental achievement was realized as over 350 events took place worldwide, both online and over the board, setting the record for the most chess games played in 24 hours While the initial goal was to surpass one million games, the total number played was an astounding 7,284,970. A total of 109 chess federations participated, reporting their results globally. The federations with the highest number of games were Sri Lanka (9,848 games), India (9,397 games), and Kazakhstan (8,759 games). Sri Lanka and India also hosted the most registered tournaments for this competition, each with 78, followed by China with 45. To validate the record, specific conditions were required: all games, whether online or offline, had to be played within a 24-hour period and registered as part of the FIDE 100 Guinness World Records Attempt. Each player could participate in multiple games, but the minimum time control was set at 3 minutes plus 2 seconds, excluding bullet games. Among the more than seven million games played, 75,132 (just over 1%) were over-the-board, with the rest played online across five platforms: Chess.com (including ChessKid), Lichess, FIDE Online Arena, SimpleChess, The Chess Alliance, and Zhisai. Chess.com, including its ChessKid platform, contributed the largest number of eligible games, exceeding six million. “This is a great success for FIDE and for chess, and I am very proud that we achieved this on the day we celebrated 100 years since the founding of our great organization,” said FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich. Speaking on FIDE’s YouTube Channel during a special six-hour live broadcast of International Chess Day celebrations, Dvorkovich described the events as a “celebration of the spirit of victory for chess.” “This is just the first century [of FIDE]. Many more centuries are ahead of us,” he added. “We are happy to share this moment with millions worldwide, especially those who helped set the Guinness record. Many people will start playing chess from this day,” Dvorkovich concluded. A Huge Undertaking The Guinness World Records attempt was a massive project, prepared over several months. International Arbiter Laurent Freyd, the key instigator and supervisor from FIDE’s side, highlighted the event’s uniqueness. Speaking from the 57th International Chess Festival in Biel, Switzerland, Freyd remarked, “As an arbiter, you manage some players at an event. Today, it’s about managing 350 arbiters running events worldwide, with many players participating!” The Guinness World Records receives about 65,000 applications annually, each vetted by experts. For the FIDE attempt, Carl Saville, the Guinness World Records Official Adjudicator and a chess fan was sent to Biel. Together with Lauren Freyd, he closely monitored the event’s developments. At the end of the day, Saville joined FIDE’s live broadcast to announce: “After reviewing the documents and verifying the final guideline verification, I can confirm that FIDE has achieved a total of 5.4 million games played, setting a new record! FIDE – you are now, officially, amazing!” As he spoke, more results came in, and by the end of the 24-hour period, the total reached a stunning 7,284,970 chess games played globally—a record hard to set and likely even harder to surpass. “This fantastic record is the result of a tremendous collaborative effort. We are grateful to all national federations, tournament organizers and chess enthusiasts involved,” said Andre Voegtlin, Chair of FIDE’s Social Commission. On the importance of records The six-hour FIDE YouTube broadcast featured prominent figures from the chess world and some of the current and former top Grandmasters, including Vidit Gujrathi, Levon Aronian, Nigel Short, former women’s world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk and her husband Pavel Tregubov, former world champion Vishy Anand, and Emil Sutovsky. One of the guests was Alireza Firouzja, the 21-year-old Iranian-born Grandmaster naturalized in France and regarded as one of the most promising young chess players. “Chess took our childhood and everything with it, so it cannot be just a game. It’s a game we all love, one you get addicted to and cannot stop playing,” Firouzja said. He also emphasized the importance of world records: “Since childhood, I’ve always looked at the records – becoming the youngest world champion, eyeing the rating records. Records stay in history, and they motivate you to reach and break them.” With the setting of this record, FIDE has also set a new and promising challenge that will benefit the game: any future records will depend on more chess games being played, thus putting a challenge to chess enthusiasts of the future to do more and aim higher.
Youth Solving Championships – FIDE & WFCC special project
The FIDE Centenary celebrations include some new and promising projects in cooperation with the WFCC. In November, World Solving Championships for girls and boys, the biggest ever youth-solving competitions will be held as part of FIDE major events for cadets (U8, U10, U12) and juniors (U14, U16, U18). Juniors will be solving eight problems and endgames on November 4, during the free day of the World Youth Chess Championships in Florianópolis, the capital of southern Brazil’s Santa Catarina state. Cadets will have their solving championships on November 21, the rest day of the World Cadet Chess Championships in Montesilvano, a city in the Abruzzo region of Italy. While celebrating this historical breakthrough in promoting chess composition among new generations, it’s time to recall the prehistory that allowed us to take a considerable step forward. More than 30 years ago, different countries started applying the national solving championship model in the context of national youth chess championships. On the European level, it debuted in 2002, with the first such event organized in Serbia during the European Youth Blitz and Rapid Championship, and in the age categories U10, U14, and U18. Roughly the same format has been adopted by most of the hosts of this type of European chess competition, but some countries were not ready to organize these events. In other words, those competitions depended on the activity of the local chess composers and their relations with the national chess federations. The longer-lasting chess competitions with classical time control were more suitable for organizing solving contests during the mandatory free days. Such a concept was brought to the platform of global FIDE events in Batumi 2006, when the director of the World Youth Chess Championships 2006 Akaki Iashvili initiated World Youth Solving Cup in the age categories U10, U14 and U18. We owe it to his long-lasting cooperation with the Grandmaster of Chess Composition David Gurgenidze, a chess writer, historian and trainer, in short – a Georgian chess legend. These two prominent Georgian chess personalities opened the doors for future solving competitions as a part of FIDE youth events. FIDE solving events pioneers Akaki Iashvili and David Gurgenidze at the closing ceremony of the World Congres of Chess Composition in Batumi 2023 / Photo WFCC However, after Batumi 2006 and Antalya 2007, the next such competition had to wait till 2016, when the FIDE championships were again organized in Georgia. In 2022, as the FIDE Special Tasks Director, Akaki Iashvili recommended solving competitions to become a part of all FIDE youth events. In Batumi 2022 (221 participants) and again in Batumi 2023, these events were branded as World Youth Solving Championships U10, U14 and U18. A month ago Batumi hosted a newly introduced Cadets World Cup (U8, U10 & U12), with 132 players taking part in the solving competition called the Cadets World Solving Cup. The youngest generations enjoyed uncovering subtle combinations in seemingly simple positions. To get full points for the Mate in 2 moves below, it was enough to write the correct first move of White, but to find it, one needs to anticipate all Black’s replies. The surprising solution is quite enjoyable: Yuri Selyavkin, “Vpered”, 1985 White to play and mate in 2 moves Since 2006, David Gurgenidze has directed all FIDE solving events (in the photo gallery below during the Cadets World Solving Cup 2024), with only one of the six competitions (Antalya 2007) held outside Georgia. The organizers’ goodwill and personal affinities with local chess composers determined whether such competitions would be held. The next step was to ensure regularity of solving championships and to avoid improvisation, whatever country gets the role of the organizer of the FIDE championships. That’s where fruitful cooperation between WFCC and the FIDE officers has helped enormously. It started in Fujairah 2022, when the FIDE Deputy Chair Dana Reizniece-Ozola came to honor the closing ceremony of the World Congress of Chess Composition (WCCC). The communications with the main WCCC organizer, Akaki Iashvili, continued at the WCCC 2023 in Batumi. As the Chair of the FIDE Events Commission, Akaki Iashvili negotiated with the organizers in Brazil and Italy to enrich their chess program with official solving championships under the standardized rules, conditions and guidance of the WFCC. In January 2024, as a special guest of the 20th International Solving Contest in Fujairah, the FIDE Executive Officer Victor Bologan (pictured at the closing ceremony, with the WFCC Vice-President Abdulla Ali Aal Barket on his left) showed a great interest in solving competitions and shared his ideas how to promote them. He suggested including the youth-solving championships into the special FIDE & WFCC projects in 2024, marking the FIDE Centenary. Photo: Fujairah Chess & Culture Club The future of this big joint project will largely depend on the success and overall effects of the two inaugural competitions in November. Our preparations started over a year ago, with forming a working group headed by the WFCC Vice-President Dinu-Ioan Nicula. An International Chess Arbiter with more than 20 years of experience in directing solving competitions at chess events, he prepared all the relevant documents and accepted the role of selector for the November competitions. Some other members of our society have shown great enthusiasm in joining the project. Instructions for writing solutions with illustrative examples were prepared by Ilija Serafimović and Marcos Maldonado Roland, who also contributed to logistics in Brazil, where Ricardo de Mattos Vieira took the role of main judge. All the WFCC documents were agreed upon with the FIDE Events Commission first and then with the local organizers. These documents were enclosed in the official invitations sent to all national chess federations and later on the official websites of both FIDE events. WFCC Secretary Mohammad Alhallak has prepared the registration forms and the newly opened WFCC page on the Chess-Results server. With a kind support of Heinz Herzog, the creator of the Chess-Results server, WFCC now has a permanent license to use the most popular server for announcements and results of the