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Wednesday, 16 Dec 2020 23:56
Brazilian Post issues official chess stamp

The Brazilian Post (Correios Brasil) launched an official chess stamp with the Brazilian Chess Confederation (CBX) and its president GM Darcy Lima serving as a technical adviser of the project. The issue of postal chess stamps by Correios Brasil intends to promote the game through philately. Notably, before the advent of digitalization, correspondence chess (with opponents sending moves to one another by letters) was quite popular.

It is believed that chess was brought to Brazil by Pero Vaz de Caminha, as described in several books. With the arrival of D. João VI and his court in Brazil in 1808, the game rapidly chess spread throughout the country. This Monarch brought to Brazil many chess books, including very rare copies (some as old as 1497) that are still available in the National Library Archive in Rio de Janeiro. Several Brazilian historical figures regularly played chess. The prime example is a famous Brazilian writer Machado de Assis, who became the Secretary of the Carioca Club of Chess, composed chess problems, and included passages on chess into some of his works. Machado de Assis was also present at the first chess tournament in Brazil back in 1880.

The Brazilian Chess Confederation (CBX), the main chess entity in Brazil, was founded on November 11, 1924, and joined the International Chess Federation (FIDE) in 1935. CBX manages and organizes events, and promotes the game of chess in Brazil, uniting tens of thousands of official players and hundreds of thousands of supporters. CBX organized its first official Brazilian Championship in 1927 at Clube de Regatas Vasco da Gama, won by Dr. João de Souza Mendes Júnior, from Rio de Janeiro. In 2012, Brazilian chess won the Spirit of Sports Award from Sportaccord as the best social sports project in the world. The winning project “Chess that liberates” created by Prof. Charles Moura Netto and Grandmaster Darcy Lima uses chess as a tool to re-socialize prisoners.