Congratulations: FIDE turns 100!

FIDE was founded on July 20, 1924, in Paris, as one of the very first international sports federations – the others were football, cricket, swimming, and auto racing. It was created during the 8th Olympic Games, on the initiative of P. Vincent (France), L. Rees (Great Britain), A. Rueb (Netherlands) and a group of Russian emigrant chess players headed by Alexander Alekhine. The name is an acronym for the French Federation International des Echecs.

Since 1927 FIDE it has regularly conducted the World Chess Olympiads, and in 1948 took over the World Chess Championship. It is also responsible for awarding titles in over-the-board standard chess: Grandmaster (GM), International Master (IM), FIDE Master (FM), Candidate Master (CM), Woman Grandmaster (WGM), Woman International Master (WIM), Woman FIDE Master (WFM), Woman Candidate Master (WCM).

If you want to learn all about the birth of FIDE and its historical development, this Wiki article is a good place to go. For full documentation there is hardly a better place than Edward Winter's Chess: The History of FIDE.

Presidents of FIDE

Master Class Vol.17 - Boris Spassky

In this video course, experts including Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Karsten Müller and Oliver Reeh, examine the games of Boris Spassky. Let them show you which openings Spassky chose to play, where his strength in middlegames were and much more.

1. Alexander Rueb, Netherlands (1924 – 1949), who was an attorney and chess bibliophile from The Hague and chess bibliophile, friend of Max Euwe. He headed FIDE for a quarter of a century.
2. Folke Rogard, Sweden (1949 – 1970) was also an attorney and a chess arbiter. Together with Botvinnik and Euwe he made great contributions to the creation of the World Championship system.
3. Max Euwe, Netherlands (1970 – 1978) was a former world chess champion, a chess literary figure, a doctor of mathematics, a professor, and a computer specialist.
4. Friðrik Ólafsson, Iceland (1978 – 1982), a top grandmaster who took part in the 1959 Candidates Tournament. Ólafsson was an attorney and later became Speaker of Iceland’s parliament.
5. Florencio Campomanes, Philippines (1982 – 1995), a national chess master and chess official. His most controversial decision was the termination of the Karpov–Kasparov world championship match of 1984 –1985.
6. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, Russia (1995 – 2014), the former president of the Republic of Kalmykia. He rewrote chess tradition by replacing the match for the chess crown with a huge knockout tournament system.
7. Arkady Dvorkovich, a Russian politician and economist, who was Deputy Prime Minister in Dmitry Medvedev's Cabinet from 2012 until 2018. Dvorkovich was elected in October 2018 and is the incumbent president of FIDE.

Celebrations

The chess federation, which currently has its headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, is now one of the largest, encompassing 201 countries as affiliate members, in the form of National Chess Federations. Chess is nowadays a truly global sport, with dozens of millions of players in all the continents, and more than 60 million games on average played every day.

On June 20, 2024, Liaocheng (Shandong Province, China) hosted a Campus Chess Tournament for first and second-grade students to celebrate the upcoming FIDE anniversary.

World record event

On July 20, 2024, on the 100th anniversary of its founding, FIDE has planned a monumental event. It is a quest to set the Guinness World Record for the most chess games played in 24 hours, asking players all over the world to help achieve this goal. They are asked to play at least one 5-min game on one of the platforms or applications joining the World Records Attempt, between July 20, 2024 00:00:00 CEST and July 21, 2024 00:00:00 CEST. Full details are to be found here.

Torch 

For its 100th anniversary FIDE launched the Chess Torch Relay, a global movement aimed at celebrating the rich history of the game and bringing together the entire chess community. On its global journey from the Indian subcontinent to Africa, Europe and North America.

Attack like a Super Grandmaster

In this Fritztrainer: “Attack like a Super GM” with Gukesh we touch upon all aspects of his play, with special emphasis on how you can become a better attacking player.

The torch festivities began with a bang – with a special Chess Torch Ceremony held in India

...with Arkady Dvorkovich, Vishy Anand and leading the crowd

in the above video the FIDE100 Torch Relay was headed to Casablanca, Morocco. Here is an overview of the Torch Relay, and here special reports on it progress in different countries – like Canada, Switzerland, Romania, Africa, Ghana, Colombia.

Here's a promotional video from FIDE:

Here's a greeting from the incumbent president Arkady Dvorkovich:

And here is a greeting from ChessBase:

A Supergrandmaster's Guide to Openings Vol.1 & 2

This video course includes GM Anish Giri's deep insights and IM Sagar Shah's pertinent questions to the super GM. In Vol.1 all the openings after 1.e4 are covered.