The World Amateur Chess Championship is a tournament organised by FIDE. The world governing body intended to promote amateur

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

play by holding championship tournaments linked to the

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a vari ...

, but only two events were held.

History

The first championship was held the year that FIDE was founded, at the 1924 Summer Olympics in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. This is considered the unofficial first

Chess Olympiad The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in 2020 an ...

, and is the only Olympiad that was an individual event. The second championship was held at the 1928 Summer Olympics in

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...

, in conjunction with the 2nd Chess Olympiad. Chess has never been an official part of the Olympic Games, and since the chess community does not make any essential distinction between amateur and professional the championship was discontinued after 1928. However, in 1995 FIDE has revamped it to celebrate the centenary of the

Hastings International Chess Congress The Hastings International Chess Congress is an annual chess tournament which takes place in Hastings, England, around the turn of the year. The main event is the Hastings Premier tournament, which was traditionally a 10 to 16 player round-robin t ...

and since then it has been held annually. The first renewed edition, held concurrently with the 1995/96 Hastings Congress from 28 December 1995 to 5 January 1996, was restricted to non-FIDE rated players. Subsequently, amateur was defined as a player with a FIDE rating below 2000 and not having attained a rating of more than 2000 in the past 2 years. Since 2016, the championship has been split into three rating categories: U-2300, U-2000 and U-1700. According to the current FIDE regulations, the winner is awarded with the title of

FIDE Master FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and ...

(FM), while the runner-up and the bronze medallist receive the Candidate Master (CM) title. Analogously the women's champion receives the title of Woman FIDE Master (WFM), silver and bronze medallists in the women's category are granted the title Woman Candidate Master (WCM). Since 2012, there is another World Amateur Chess Championship, organised by the Amateur Chess Organisation (ACO), which is not recognised by FIDE.WORLD AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP
. FIDE. 2013-11-05

Winners

References

* * * {{Chess Amateur 1924 in chess 1928 in chess Amateur sports

History

Winners

See also

References