Sports GK Quiz: Chess and Indian Grandmasters

Chaturanga was played in India in the Gupta age and its name means four limbs, standing for the four divisions of an ancient army: infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots.

Anand, born in Mayiladuthurai and brought up in Chennai, earned the Grandmaster title in 1988 while still a teenager and became the first Indian to hold the highest lifetime title awarded by FIDE.

Humpy, from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, earned the open Grandmaster title in 2002 while in her teens, and at that time she was the youngest woman in the world to have done so.

A chessboard is a square divided into eight rows, called ranks, and eight columns, called files, so the number of squares is 8 multiplied by 8, that is 64.

FIDE, the Federation Internationale des Echecs, was founded in Paris in 1924, and its motto is Gens una sumus, a Latin phrase meaning we are one people.

The date marks the founding of FIDE, the international chess federation, in Paris on 20 July 1924, and the day is observed by chess federations across the world with tournaments and school events.

The knight moves in the shape of the letter L, two squares along a rank or file and then one square at right angles, and it is the only piece that may pass over any piece standing in its way, its own or the opponent's. This is why a knight…

Gukesh, from Chennai, won the Candidates Tournament in 2024 and then beat the defending champion Ding Liren of China in the title match held at Singapore later the same year, taking the crown at the age of eighteen and becoming the youngest undisputed world champion in the history of the…

The award, instituted in 1991 and now named the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna, went in its very first year to the chess Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand, who had turned Grandmaster three years earlier and was then rising rapidly in world chess.

Manuel Aaron of Chennai earned the International Master title in 1961, the first Indian to hold any international chess title, and he dominated the national championship for close to two decades at a time when India had no professional circuit.

Arpad Elo was a Hungarian-born American physics professor and a strong amateur player who designed a statistical method to compare players, and FIDE adopted it.

The 44th Chess Olympiad was played in 2022 at Mamallapuram near Chennai in Tamil Nadu, the first time India had hosted the team world championship of chess, and the Indian teams won bronze medals in the open section and in the women's section.