CHESS FUN FACTS

• The history of chess goes back at least 1,400 years, where the game originated in India and Persia.
• Chess hasn’t changed much over the years. In fact, the last rule change was about 500 years ago.
• It is believed that chess began as a way to get the royal children to think analytically and strategically.
• The United States Chess Federation is 63 years old and boasts more than 90,000 members.
• About 3 million chess sets are sold every year in the United States.
• Yasser Seirawan, a top-ranked U.S. chess grandmaster is a Garfield High School graduate and co-founder of America's Foundation for Chess. He has also authored 13 books on chess.
• At 2838 on the world-ranking list, Garry Kasparov is the highest-rated player in the world. The average tournament player is around 1750.
• There are 169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,000 ways to play the first ten moves in chess.
• The word 'Checkmate' in comes from the Persian phrase 'Shah mat,' which means 'the king is dead.'
• The first American chess tournament was held in New York in 1843.