The youngest candidate from Pakistan to grab the title of ‘Woman Candidate Master’ (WCM) is Mehak Gul, a 16-year-old girl. She achieved this feat at the World Chess Olympiad 2016, held at Azerbaijan, she won six out of 11 rounds.

The longest game of chess that is theoretically possible is 5,949 moves.

The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves for both sides in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

The word ‘Checkmate’ in chess comes from the Persian phrase ‘Shah mat’, which means ‘the King is dead’.

The longest official chess game ever was I. Nikolic–Arsovic, Belgrade 1989, which ended in a draw after 269 moves (20 hours, 15 minutes).

Initially, the queen could only move one square at a time, diagonally. Later, she could move two squares at a time, diagonally. It was during Queen Isabella’s reign in Spain that the queen became the strongest piece on the board.

In 1997, Deep Blue, a computer, beat world champion Garry Kasparov to prove that computers can be smarter than humans. Computers, able to make millions of calculations per second, play near-flawless chess.

Dr Emanuel Lasker from Germany retained the World Chess Champion title for longer than any other player ever: 26 years and 337 days.

Published in Dawn, Young World, September 24th, 2016