Fun Chess Facts

Chess originated in India circa 450 AD and was first known by the name Chaturanga.
After each side has completed 2 moves in a chess game, there are nearly 300,000 different positions that may result. After 4 moves, there are over 318 billion possible positions.
Theoretically, the longest possible chess game would last 5,949 moves.
The longest officially recorded chess game took place in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1989 and lasted 269 moves. The game ended in a draw.
The "Knight's Tour" is a series of moves whereby a knight moves around the board landing on each and every square exactly once. There are over 122 million unique knight tours.
In 1957, Soviet Grandmaster and World Champion, Mikhail Botvinnik, began working on the problem of using computers to solve the game of chess. This was 4 years before the United States and the Soviet Union began using computers to solve the problem of getting humans to the moon. In spite of the incredibly powerful computing technology we have available today, it is expected that humans will walk on Mars before computers have finished "solving chess."
Being played in over 150 countries, chess is a nearly universal language, with over 600 million people worldwide who know how to play.
Paul Morphy was the greatest chess player in the world during the 19th century and was considered to be such an important figure in the history of the game that players began keeping track of their "Morphy Numbers." If you had played against Paul Morphy, then your Morphy number was 1. If you had played against a player who played Morphy, then your number was 2 and so on. Several members of the Mascenic Chess Club have Morphy numbers of 5! If you've played against them, then your Morphy number is 6!
The record for the longest undefeated streak in chess is held by former world champion Mikhail Tal who played 95 consecutive games without a loss.
Popular belief holds that more books have been written about chess than any other topic except for World War II.
In December 2016, American Grandmaster Timur Gareyev set the record for playing the most simultaneous games of chess while blindfolded. He played 48 games at once without looking at any of the boards, winning 35 games, drawing 7 and losing 6.
The first chess game played between earth and space took place in 1970. The Soyuz 9 cosmonauts challenged the ground crew to a game that lasted 3 orbits, ending in a draw.

And for my fellow educators out there who are interested in how chess skills can transfer to help students become stronger learners, here is a very compelling study that demonstrated a strong correlation between learning problem solving techniques in chess and dramatic improvements in math scores for a group of elementary students in Italy and the UK:

Eurasia.pdf

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