World Amateur Chess Championship

The World Amateur Chess Championship is a tournament organised by the World Chess Federation, FIDE. FIDE intended to promote amateur chess play by holding championship tournaments linked to the Olympic Games, but only two events were held.

History

The first championship was held the year that FIDE was founded, at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. This is considered the unofficial first Chess Olympiad, and is the only Olympiad that was an individual event. The second championship was held at the 1928 Summer Olympics in The Hague, in conjunction with the 2nd Chess Olympiad.

Chess has never been an official part of the Olympic Games, and since the chess community does not make any essential distinction between amateur and professional^[1] the championship was discontinued after 1928. However, in 1995 FIDE has revamped it to celebrate the centenary of the Hastings International Chess Congress^[2] and since then has been held annually. The first renewed edition, held concurrently with the 1995/96 Hastings Congress from 28 December 1995 to 5 January 1996, was rescricted to not FIDE-rated players.^[3] Subsequently, amateur was defined as a player with a FIDE rating below 2000 and not having attained a rating of more than 2000 in the past 2 years. In 2016, the event was split for the first time in three rating categories: U-2300, U-2000 and U-1700.

According to the current FIDE regulations, the winner is awarded with the title of FIDE Master (FM), while the runner-up and the bronze medallist receive the Candidate Master (CM) title.^[4]

Since 2012, there is another World Amateur Chess Championship, organised by the Amateur Chess Organisation (ACO),^[5] which is not recognised by FIDE.^[6]

Winners

Year	Dates	Host	Winner	Second	Third
1924	4 May – 27 Jul	Paris, France	Hermanis Matisons	Fricis Apšenieks	Edgar Colle
1928	17 May – 12 Aug	Amsterdam, Netherlands	Max Euwe	Dawid Przepiórka	Hermanis Matisons
1996	28 Dec– 5 Jan	Hastings, England[7]	Brian Johnson[8]	N.N.	N.N.
1997[9]	28 Dec – 5 Jan	Hastings, England	Olev Schults	Merab Tkhalidze	Nikolos Khechikashvili
1998[10]	29 Dec – 11 Jan	Hastings, England	Viraf Avari	N.N.	N.N.
1999[11]	29 Dec – 10 Jan	Hastings, England	Gaguik Oganessian	Dan Erichsen	Peter Mercs
2000[12]	29 Dec – 6 Jan	Hastings, England	Sven Mühlenhaus	Vitaly Kachatkov	Nick Frost
2001[13]	27 Dec – 8 Jan	Pamplona, Spain	Bismarck Chaverra Rojas	Antxon Serras	Miguel Rada Equiza
2001[14]	6 Dec – 13 Dec	Bento Gonçalves, Brazil	Flávio Olivência	Darlan Veit	Milton Gonçalves Sánchez
2002[15]	13 Dec – 19 Dec	Bento Gonçalves, Brazil	Juliano Resende Pereira	Raphael Alonso	Eduardo Munoa da Silva
2003[16]	2 Jul – 13 Jul	Tshwane, South Africa	Shabier Bhawoodien	Graham Jurgensen	Octacílio Velloso
2004[17]	30 Jun – 10 Jul	Cape Town, South Africa	Farai Mandizha	Botlhale Lebea	W Ndui
2005[18]	Cancelled
2006[19]	23 Nov – 3 Dec	Tripoli, Libya	Rachid Hifad	Talat Zinahoum	Ali Abbas
2007[20]	11 Aug – 18 Aug	Predeal, Romania	Duca Alexandru Gabriel	Almog Burstein	Nagy Laszlo
2008[21]	28 Apr – 6 May	Chalkidiki, Greece	Galopoulos Panagiotis	Castano Henry Augusto	Skoulakis Charalambos
2009[22][23]	27 Apr – 3 May	Thessaloniki, Greece	Parlog Stefan	Toma Radu-Cristian]	Nagy Laszlo
2010[24][25]	19 Mar – 25 Mar	Illinois, United States	Andrew Hubbard	Alybaev Djekshenbek	Mohammad Shaikh
2011[26][27]	1 Oct - 10 Oct	Antalya, Turkey	Bilgunn Sumiya	Ozdemir Timur	Dáger Álvarez
2012[28][29]	16 Apr – 22 Apr	Chalkidiki, Greece	Haralambos Tsakiris	Akinci Muzaffer Ege	Johannesson Oliver
2013[30][31]	21 Apr – 30 Apr	Iași, Romania	Vrencian Lehel	Aron Teh Eu Wen	Boldoo Erdenepurev
2014[32]	26 Apr – 3 May	Singapore	Gijir Munkhbayar	Agibileg Uurtsaikh	Ashvin Sivakumar
2015[33]	14 Apr – 21 Apr	Chalkidiki, Greece	Mire Deniz Doğan	Konstantinos Michaelides	Kaimar Puusepp
2016[34]	18 Apr – 28 Apr	Chalkidiki, Greece	Zhuban Bigabylov	Toomas Valgmae	Ganzorig Gantsooj
2017	1 Apr – 9 Apr	Spoleto, Italy

See also

• 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad (Paris 1924)
• 2nd Chess Olympiad (The Hague 1928)

References

• Brace, Edward R. (1977), An Illustrated Dictionary of Chess, Hamlyn Publishing Group, p. 18, ISBN 1-55521-394-4 
• Hooper, David; Whyld, Kenneth (1992), The Oxford Companion to Chess (2 ed.), Oxford University Press, p. 13, ISBN 0-19-280049-3 
• Whyld, Ken (1986), Chess: The Records, Guinness Books, p. 28, ISBN 0-85112-455-0