By a decision of the World Chess Federation, July 20th is marked as International Chess Day since 1966.
Chess came to Russia in the 9th century and has since become a favourite game of many Russians Grand Masters of the country have for many years be among the leading players in the world. A Russian woman, Alexandra Kostenuk is the current female World chess champion.
Aged 26 years, she has been playing chess for more than 20 years, and has been trying hard to popularize the game throughout the world. Her books titled “How to become a Grand-Master at 14”, and another one - “Diary of a Chess Queen”, have been translated to many languages and reprinted. Her Internet site called “Chess is Cool”, is among the most visited.Playing chess professionally entails constant travel.
Playing a good round of chess is difficult and when things are not going your way, emotions get the better part of you, especially as a woman chess player, Kostenuk confessed. She says that the argument over whether chess is a summer or winter game, or whether it is a sport at all, is beside the point.
"We so much want to join the Olympic family that it does not matter whether chess is regarded a summer or winter sport. After all, chess can be played at any season of the year," said Kostenuk. In her capacity as the Chair-person of the Women Committee of FIDE, Kostenuk has worked hard to get Chess included on the list of Olympic events, hoping to take part in the Olympic Games herself. She says that the International Olympic Committee, IOC is not in a hurry to include chess in its programme so as not to set a precedent.
If a precedent is created with Chess, other intellectual f sports will also want to be included on the Olympic list since what is food for the gander is also good for the goose.
"An intellectual competition between chess, draught, bridge and others has recently been held and it will be nice to hold such competitions at the same time with the Olympics, or parallel with Olympic Games," said Kostenuk.
Millions of lovers of chess have long regarded it as an Olympic event, and Chess Federations in many countries are members of the national IOC. It is highly symbolic that FIDE was created in Paris in 1924, during the Olympic Games.
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