FIDE Breaks Records 'Checkmating' Coronavirus
FIDE's record-breaking Checkmate Coronavirus project saw 520,000 entries and 120,000 unique participants from at least 140 countries in 2,762 different tournaments on various chess platforms. The string of tournaments lasted 720 hours between May 18 and June 16, 2020.
The International Chess Federation speaks of "staggering numbers, unprecedented and unthinkable for any sport."
Chess.com did its part by hosting 812 tournaments with a total of 277,573 entries in which 735,787 games were played by 86,971 unique players.
According to FIDE's numbers, 20 percent of all grandmasters and 10 percent of all FIDE titled players joined the initiative at some point, including big names such as GMs Ding Liren, Anish Giri, Wang Hao, Peter Svidler, David Navara, and also the four women's world champions, Hou Yifan, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Antoaneta Stefanova, and Tan Zhongyi—alongside thousands of amateur players.
As national chess federations had been invited by FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich to actively engage in the initiative, more than 60 national federations and two associations affiliated with FIDE organized their own tournaments which were included in the project. Some federations staged more than 25-30 tournaments each, including school championships and national team events.
64 players won the top prize: a paid trip to the 2021 Chess Olympiad. Others won masterclasses and mini-matches against top GMs (which will take place July-September) or souvenirs.
The winners are aged from 9 to 64 years old and are from at least 37 countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Greece, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Myanmar, Netherlands, Pakistan, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, Spain Sudan, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, UK, Uruguay, USA, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.
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Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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