Chess Grandmaster facts

While investigating facts about Chess Grandmaster List and Chess Grandmaster Rating, I found out little known, but curios details like:

The current chess grandmaster, Magnus Carlsen, intentionally plays non-book "inaccuracies" during opening (moves he knows aren't the best) to force the game into a non-book position ASAP so his opponents will have to think for themselves instead of going by memorised opening theory

how chess grandmasters think?

Ossip Bernstein, a famous chess grandmaster, who was sentenced to death by the Bolsheviks in 1918. While he was facing the firing squad, a russian officer that heard his name offered him the chance to prove his identity in a game of chess. He beat the officer and was released.

What makes a chess grandmaster?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what does it take to be a chess grandmaster. Here are 43 of the best facts about Chess Grandmaster Salary and Chess Grandmasters By Country I managed to collect.

what is a chess grandmaster?

When chess player Bobby Fischer beat soviet grandmaster Taimanov, Taimanov was thrown off the USSR team, forbidden to travel, banned from writing articles, and deprived of his monthly stipend. It virtually ended his career.
Chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer literally spat on a US order warning him that a rematch in Eastern Europe would violate US sanctions. He played the match and then spent the next 16 years as a fugitive outside the US until his death.
A man named Laszlo Polgar developed a method to raise child prodigies. He wrote a book on it, married a language teacher, and they raised two of the 11 current female chess grandmasters in the world.
In 1999 chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov played The World in a game of chess that lasted over four months. Over 50,000 people from more than 75 countries participated in the game with moves being decided by majority vote. Garry ended up winning on turn 62 when 51% of The World decided to resign.
Hungarian psychologist László Polgár wrote a book on how to raise a genius. He showed his ideas to his teacher, they got married and raised their three children to be chess grandmasters, two of them are record breakers and one became the first female to beat the top-ranked male.
The Grandmaster Experiment: Man finds wife based on her committal to creating children with the sole purpose of training them to become geniuses. He succeeds and has 3 daughters - all of which became Chess Grandmasters and the first women to achieve such status.
A chess grandmaster threw the final round of a tournament in protest of having repeatedly been made to play women. She turned down the chance to defend her women’s world title to play mixed matches and randomly drew 7 women out of 10 rounds. The 5 move loss is the quickest ever by a grandmaster.
Mark Taimanov, a Russian chess Grandmaster, after losing 6-0 to Bobby Fischer in 1971's World Chess Championship Candidates quarterfinal, got his salary and his ability to leave the country taken away, aswell as being censored in the press because the Russian government was so embarrassed.
In 1947, chess grandmaster Miguel Najdorf played a record 45 simultaneous games of blindfolded chess. He had no way of contacting any friends or family who might have survived the Holocaust, and broke the record in hopes they might see the news coverage. The record stood for 64 years.
The finance minister of Latvia is also Woman Grandmaster of chess, the second highest-ranking chess title that exists for women

chess grandmaster facts — What does it take to become a chess grandmaster?

Chess Grandmaster data charts

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chess grandmaster fact data chart about Grandmaster chess games visualized through heatmap — Grandmaster chess games visualized through heatmap

Why are chess grandmasters so good?

You can easily fact check chess grandmasters why by examining the linked well-known sources.

A Hungarian psychologist wrote a book on how to raise a genius. He proposed his ideas to a teacher. They married and raised three chess grandmasters, two of them became record-breakers and one even became the first female to beat the top ranked male.

Chess Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen once defeated 10 players of 10 different matches all at once without even looking at the board. - source

Chess prodigy and current World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen earned his grandmaster title in 2004 at the age of 13 years and 148 days. He plays himself in the movie/documentary "Magnus." - source

Paul Keres was the chess Grandmaster. He was born in Estonia. More than 100,000 people attended his funeral in 1975. This was equal to 10% of the population of Estonia at the time.

American Chess Grandmaster Bobby Fischer had a warrant for his arrest placed for playing in embargoed Yugoslavia and not paying taxes on his winnings. He never returned to the US and in his later years would travel the world, making anti-American and anti-Semitic remarks on the radio - source

When do you become a grandmaster in chess?

In 2011, Chess Grandmaster Ghaem Maghami set the world record for largest Chess simultaneous exhibition. He played 604 players over 25 hours, scoring 580 wins and 16 draws.

How chess grandmasters train?

There are only 33 (Living) Female Chess Grandmasters and once attained chess players keep the title of Grandmaster for life.

Vladimir Konstantinovich Bagirov, a Soviet-Latvian grandmaster of chess, died of a heart attack while playing a tournament game.

Chess Grandmaster Samuel Rechevsky was labeled as a child prodigy after he won a simultaneous exhibition against 9 Chess Masters when he was 8 years old.

In 1966, Chess Grandmaster and legend Mikhail Tal was forced to miss the first five rounds of the Chess Olympiad due to injuries after he got into a bar fight flirting with someone else's girlfriend and was hit in the head.

AlphaZero, the artificial intelligence that mastered chess, shogi and go, is estimated to have taken only 4 hours of learning in order to achieve an Elo rating higher than any other chess grandmaster or engine.

When are you a grandmaster in chess?

Chess Grandmaster 'Tigran Petrosian' would ski several hours a day as prep for his world championship bout, believing that physical fitness would be a major factor to success

Chess Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen once played 10 games simultaneously, and won...with his back turned the whole time.

László Polgár put an ad in the newspaper looking for a woman to marry and raise a child to prove genius is made not born. A woman replied and they subsequently raised 3 female chess grandmasters.

Russian Chess Grandmaster Ossip Bernstein was arrested in the 1918 Bolshevik Revolution and was sent to the firing squad without a trial, but winning a game of chess saved his life

How to become a chess grandmaster?

Chess Grandmaster Bobby Fischer, who vanished in 1972, actually reappeared in the 90s. He died in 2003.

Bobby Fischer, widely considered the greatest chess player of all time, became a Grandmaster at 15 and a half years old in 1958. Today, 36 people have reached the title of Grandmaster before they were 15, with the youngest being 12 years, 7 months old when they received the distinction.

In 2009 an app called Pocket Fritz running on a 528 MHz HTC Touch was entered into a grandmaster chess tournament and won.

The song, "One Night in Bangkok" is actually a showtune from the musical, Chess, rapped by an American chess grandmaster.

Chess grandmaster can lose 20 to 25 pounds during the course of a single tournament, while just remaining sitted and playing.

Chess grandmaster Alexander Alekhine, was a Nazi sympathizer who wrote in an article that "Jews played defensive, cowardly chess and the Aryan chessplayers played attacking chess that was aggressive and brave"

Magnus Carlsen who played against 10 chess grandmasters simultaneously with his back turned to them while verbally being told each person's moves. He beat them all.

A 3 year old Chess prodigy called Misha Osipov played legendary Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov on a talent show, and has won against Grandmasters such as Yuri Averbakh

1 month after the death of the world chess champion Tigran V. Petrosian, Tigran L. Petrosian was born and went on to also become a chess grandmaster

Even though a chess grandmaster can perfectly rearrange a midgame chessboard after seeing it for only 3 seconds, they can't do the same when the pieces are placed at random. They rely on a process called "chunking" (pattern recognition) vs common perception that they have photographic memories.

An Indian chess grandmaster beat Capablanca, but was never given an official title because of his low status. He had no formal education; Mir Sultan Khan was his name.

"The Turk" was the first automated chess machine. Between 1770-1854, it beat notable figures, including Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon. Later, it was discovered to be a hoax, as the device allowed chess masters to hide inside of it. The first real chess machine beat a grandmaster in 1996.

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