Portal:Chess/Did you know/23

...that Russian team competing in the open division at the 37th Chess Olympiad in 2006 comprised six of the event's top seventeen players by rating and entered the event seeded first but ultimately failed to medal?
...that the chess problem Excelsior, published by American puzzle author Sam Loyd in 1861 and named for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Excelsior", requires a player in a given chess problem to deliver checkmate with the least likely piece or pawn?
...that grasshopper chess is a variant game in which a fairy piece grasshopper, represented by an inverted queen figurine, begins in the game in any of several placements but moves invariably by hopping over another piece at any distance to the square directly beyond the piece?
...that Indian Koneru Humpy (pictured), the youngest-ever female Grandmaster, was given the forename Hampi at her birth but was subsequently given the more Russian-sounding name Humpy by her father?
...that because its sponsor and organizer, Luis Rentero, is a strong opponent of short draws, the Linares-Morelia chess tournament employs a nontraditional tiebreaker, awarding places on the basis of total wins?
...that undermining is a chess tactic in which a defensive piece is captured, leaving an opponent's piece undefended or underdefended and obliging the opponent, usually to his detriment, to choose between recapturing or saving the underdefended piece?

Archive