Playing Chess

Though many people throughout the world play chess simply for the enjoyment and mental sharpening provided by the game, chess also provides for the occasion of some competitions which are accorded great significance by their various participants and in their dispensing of awards can provide the occasion for great prestige to be bestowed on certain players both in the world of chess enthusiasts and professionals and in the wider world at large. The most significant, though not only, organization for people who seriously play chess is known as the Federation Internationale des Echecs or FIDE, or sometimes for English speakers the World Chess Federation. It is an internationally based organization that provides for connections and cooperation between various nationally and locally based chess groups and allows the certification of approval to be bestowed on certain widely known competitions matching people against each other renowned for their skillful ability to play chess.

Due to the high prestige enjoyed by the FIDE, the organization is officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee. It is perhaps most respected and known for its role in organizing the World Chess Championship and the Chess Olympiad, as well as very regional championship competitions at which people play chess. There are few other chess competitions in which FIDE plays a direct organizational part, but it is responsible for setting the rules and regulations by which these competitions are governed. In a more general sense, the FIDE has the responsibility and power of defining the official according to which individual players and those based out of competitions play chess. Some of the titles that can be awarded to individuals for the excellence found in them by FIDE in their ability to competitively play chess include FIDE Master, International Master, and International Grandmaster, along with modified feminine versions of those titles. Master and Grandmaster titles can be awarded outside the realm of actual competitions at which people play chess against each other for solving notable problems and formulating ingenious methods of study, which FIDE will then periodically publish through FIDE Albums.
FIDE has its origins in Paris in 1924. This followed earlier efforts made elsewhere in Europe to form some kind of wide reaching organizations for people who liked to play chess at a professional or highly trained level, and that had been disrupted by international events such as the beginning of the First World War. FIDE was successfully formed during a chess competition held during the Eighth Sports Olympics at the behest of a famous Russian grandmaster. When the organization was first successfully formed, it functioned as a kind of players’ unions and consequently did little to attract funding and wide media attention. It thus was left poorly financed and had a relatively informal nature. FIDE began to become known to the wider community of people who play chess when it became involved in dispensing recognition to world chess champions. Later it had conflicts with an organization called the Soviet Chess Federation over relative status.