Chess is a highly competitive game that has accounted for many records being set in the history of chess tournaments. What are the most outstanding records and who made them can be found out here. The statistics is interwoven with many outstanding moments that contributed to the adrenalin rush in players and spectators resulting in records.
General Stats
It is necessary to mention that Russia is the country with the greatest number of grandmasters. According to the list from January, Russia had 217 out of 1506 grandmasters. However, in 2005, Reykjavík had the greatest concentration of resident grandmasters with 8 GM players. The youngest player to receive his Grandmaster title by FIDE was Sergey Karjakin who qualified for the title in 2002 when he was exactly 12 years and seven months old.
The Records
Let us start with the longest chess game ever played in the history of chess. The length is measured in moves not time resulting in exactly
269 moves in total, but, as far as we are concerned, this could also be declared the longest game in hours. The game lasted more than 20 hours just to result in a draw. The game took place at a tournament in former Yugoslavia in 1989 between Arsović and Nikolić. The FIDE Federation learnt something from that and remodelled its 50 Move Rule.
The longest decisive game ever played took place recently, in 2016. It concerns the Extraliga in the
Czech Republic and the tournament Turnov of 2016, where Danin and Azarov played a 239 move game and Danin, who needed the points to end the match in a draw of 4:4, won. Even if his effort paid off, his team had to leave the top Czech chess league. The second longest decisive game took 237 moves for Kosteniuk to win against Fressinet in 2007 at the Villandry tournament. The players were not counting the moves, so Fressinet did not use his chance to call a draw after they passed 50 moves.
When it comes to the shortest games ever played, there is actually the possibility to checkmate the opponent in exactly two moves. Amateur chess used to produce such short games between two opponents. A game that ended in the shortest possible moves was recorded in 1983 between Wood and Darling. Three wider two-move checkmate games were recorded, whereby the players with the black chess pieces were both time the winners. It even happened one time that a player with white pieces won the game in two moves. This means that the player with black pieces had only made one move before he was checkmated.
How else Can You Lose the Game
FIDE introduced a couple of rules to, sort of, punish players for misbehaviour. So, for example, when a chess player is late for a game, he automatically loses that game according to the recently introduced FIDE rules. Another thing that gets players disqualified (at least for the particular round in question) is when the player’s cell phone makes any sounds, then, the opponent wins the game automatically. Hou Yifan was only five seconds late for a game in the 2009 Chinese Championship, and he automatically lost that round.