Chess Trivia

Fagan, Mathilda (1850-1931)
Winner of a chess tournament in Bombay, India in which 12 men took part. She won all her games. She was disqualified because she was a woman playing in a club whose membership was confined to men. She appealed this decision in court and won. She became an emancipation activist.

Fahrni, Hans (1874-1939)
First master to play 100 opponents simultaneously. It took place in 1911 at Munich. His score was 55 wins, 39 draws, and 6 losses in seven and a half hours.

Fairy chess
Also known as heterodox chess. Some of the Fairy pieces include nightriders, balloons, Vaos, Edgehogs, Fers, Camels, Wazirs, Imitators, and Grasshoppers.

Farm
In 1949 125,000 players competed for the championship of the USSR collective farms.

Father of Modern Chess
Nickname of Aron Nimzovich.

Fers
The mediaevel type of Queen that can move only one step along any of its 4 diagonals and has no orthogonal movement.

FIDE
The Federation Internationale des Eschecs, or world chess federation, was founded in 1924 by Pierre Vincent of France. Alexandre Rueb was the first FIDE president. The 15 founding countries were: Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia. There are 146 nations that are members, the 2nd largest organization in the world in terms of national membership (only soccer is larger). The Soviet Union joined FIDE in 1947, but only after having Spain, a founder-member of FIDE, ejected from FIDE. FIDE once considered setting up a fund for retired and impovrished chess masters.

Field, Ted
Sponsor of the New York leg of the 1990 Kasparov-Karpov world championship match. He produced THREE MEN AND A BABY, COCKTAIL, OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE, and CLASS ACTION. He bought Panavision for $52.5 million and sold it for $150 million.

Film
The first time chess appeared in film was from a scene in THE WISHING RING in 1914. The first film to deal excusively with chess was CHESS FEVER, mad in Moscow in 1925 and starring Capablanca.

Fine, Reuben (1914-1993)
One of the best chessplayers in the U.S. in the 1930s. During World War II he was employed by the Navy to calculate where enemy submarines might surface based on positional probability. He also did research on Japanese Kamikaze attacks. He was also a translator during World War II, mastering 7 languages. He gave up chess to become a psychoanalyst. He won or tied for 1st in 23 of his 27 tournaments that he played in. He won 7 US Opens.

Firdausi
One of Persia greatest poets. In 1011 he finished the great epic poem "Shah Nama" (Book of Kings) which recounted the history of chess. This massive poem took 35 years to write. It is the only pre-Islamic source which gives such details as the names of the chess pieces.

First-Second
The first time the U.S. finished first-second in an international event was the Portimao, Portugal International Tournament. Larry Evans took first place, followed by Norman Weinstein.

Fischer, Robert (1943- )
The youngest American chess champion ever (14), the second youngest grandmaster ever (15 years, 6 months, 1 day), and the youngest Candidate for the World Championship ever (15). Fischer once withdrew from a chess tournament because a woman was playing in the event (she was Lisa Lane and U.S. woman champion). His I.Q. has been recorded to be over 180. He recieved $3.65 million for defeating Spassky in the Fischer-Spassky II match in Yugoslavia in 1992. In 1962 he boasted, "Women are weakies. I can give Knight odds to any woman in the world!" His performance rating against Larsen in 1971 was 3060 after a 6-0 victory. In 1970 he won the Blitz Tournament of the Century in Herceg Novi, Yugoslavia by a score of 19 out of 22. After the tournament he called off from memory the moves of all his 22 games, involving more that 1,000 moves. In 1981 he was arrested in Pasadena under suspicion of a bank robber. He later wrote of this incident in a book entitled, I WAS TORTURED IN THE PASADENA JAILHOUSE.

Fischer Chess Clock
Aimed at eliminating time scrambles by allocating time at the beginning of a game and adding a minute increment after each move. The clock was patented (#4,884,255) by Fischer in 1988 and was used in the Fischer-Spassky II match in Yugoslavia.

Fischer, Regina Wender (1913- )
Mother of Bobby Fischer who was born in Switzerland. She was a riveter in a defense plant during World War II, became a grade school teacher, registered nurse, and physician. From 1933 to 1938 she studied medicine at the First Moscow Medical Institute in the Soviet Union. Her medical degree was not valid in the United States. She chained herself to the White House gate in 1960 to protest the government's refusal to send a chess team to East Germany. In 1968, at the age of 55, she received a medical degree from the Friedrich Schiller University in East Germany.

Flag
A device fitted on each dial of a chess clock, first used in 1899.

Flanders, Count of
In 1213 the Count of Flanders got angry and beat up his wife after losing to her in chess. Later, he was taken prisoner. His wife could have obtained his release but never forgave him for the beating. He remainded a prisoner for 13 years.

Flesch, Janos (1933-1983)
Hungarian International Master (1963) and honorary Grandmaster (1980). He claimed a world record simultaneous exhibition when he played 52 opponents blindfold exhibition in Budapest 1960.

Flohr, Salo(1908-1983)
In 1937 Salo Flohr was nominated by FIDE to be the official candidate to play Alekhine for the World Championship. Arrangements were started for a match with Alekhine, but the plans were dropped when Flohr's adopted homeland of Czechoslovakia was annexed by Germany. Flohr became a refugee for a second time and went to Russia. He was orphaned in World War I and was taken as a child refugee to Bohemia.

Flores, Rodrigo
Born in 1913 at Santiago, Chile. At 12 he played in the Chilean Championship and finished fourth. He won the Chilean ch 3 times. He was the winner of the 1946-47 Marshall Chess Club championship.

Fool's mate
The shortest game ending in mate after two moves. 1 g4 e6 or e5 2 f3 or f4 Qh4 mate.

France
The first French reference to chess is in a report of the siege of Antioch. During the First Crusade, Peter the Hermit found the Turkish general playing chess. In 110 King Louis VI of France was captured by an English knight, who shouts that the king has been captured. The King escaped yelling, "Ignorant and insolent knight. Not even in chess can a King be taken." In 1962 Bobby Dudley won the first USCF rated event in France.

Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790)
Wrote the first chess article published in America, the 'Morals of Chess.' Franklin wrote it in London in 1779 and reproduced in a refined version in the "Columbian Magazine" in Philadelphia in 1786. In 1791 a translation from the French reprint was published in St. Petersburg. This was the first book on chess published in Russia.

Fredkin Prize
Prize of $100,000 for the first computer to win a match from a Grandmaster.

Frederick the Great of Prussia
An enthusiastic chessplayer who played a correspondence game with his early tutor, Voltaire, by royal courtier between Berlin and Paris.