Archive for the ‘Trivia’ Category

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Chess Special 2

Posted in Trivia, Who wants to be a millionaire chess special on November 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Unlike the popular gameshow, features such as ‘ask the audience, phone a friend, and 50/50‘ are inapplicable here -sincere apologies. Unfortunately, there’s no money to be made from this also. 🙂 However, do your best but do it alone please -no googling!

Question 1 £100

The knight moves in a way that corresponds to which letter of the alphabet?

A: C-shape

B: J-shape

C: L-shape

D: W-shape

Question 2 £200

en passant involves the capture of what?

A: A Pawn

B: A Bishop

C: A Rook

D: A Knight

Question 3 £300

Scholar’s mate is known to be delivered in how many moves?

A: 2

B: 4

C: 6

D: 8

Question 4 £400

Which organization was formed in 1993 in order to rival FIDE?

A: BBC

B: NBA

C: ECF

D: PCA

Question 5 £500

The mechanical what was invented in the 18th century and claimed to be the first chess engine/machine?

A: The mechanical Italian

B: The mechinical Swede

C: The mechanical Greek

D: The mechanical Turk

Question 6 £1,000

The Game and Playe of the Chesse was printed in which century by William Caxton?

A: 13th century

B: 15th century

C: 17th century

D: 19th century

Question 7 £2,000

Who wrote an autobiography entitled ‘Achieving the Aim’?

A: V. Smyslov

B: Y. Averbakh

C: M. Bovinnik

D: M. Taimanov

Question 8 £4000

Which variant of chess was invented in 1953 and took its name from the main character of a popular 19th century novel?

A: Alice chess

B: Phileas chess

C: Rebecca chess

D: Oliver chess

Question 9 £8000

Ding Liren was not the 1st Asian world champion. Which was he?

A: The 2nd

B: The 3rd

C: The 4th

D: The 5th

Question 10 £16,000

In which year did FIDE adopt the ELO rating system?

A: 1966

B: 1968

C: 1970

D: 1972

Question 11 £32,000

In Kasparov’s ‘Immortal Game’ in 1999 against GM Topalov in which he sacced a rook, what defence did Topalov adopt?

A: Pirc Defence

B: Caro-Kann

C: French Defence

D: Sicilian Defence

Question 12 £64,000

Which Dutch player once said the disapproved ‘”Chess is and will always be a game of chance.”

A: Jan Timman

B: Loek Van Der Wiel

C: Max Euwe

D: Jan Hein Donner

Question 13 £125,000

Which country has held the Chess Olympiad more than any other?

A: Germany

B: Russia

C: England

D: Phillipines

Question 14 £250,000

Who was the Soviet champion in 1971?

A: Petrosian

B: Savon

C: Stein

D: Karpov

Question 15 £500,000

Which world class American player’s death was described in The New York Times as an illness contracted by the over-exertion of his memory cells’?

A: F. D. Marshall

B: Harry Nelson Pilsbury

C: James Mason

D: Isaac Kashdan

Question 16 £1,000,000

Which of the following cities did the 1907 World Championship match between Lasker and Marshall not take place in?

A: New York

B: Philadelphia

C: Memphis

D: Boston

Mark. J. McCready

Mandalay

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Answers to Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? Chess special 2

Posted in Trivia, Who wants to be a millionaire chess special on November 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »

  1. C
  2. A
  3. B
  4. D
  5. B
  6. A
  7. C
  8. A
  9. B
  10. C
  11. A
  12. D
  13. A
  14. B
  15. B
  16. D

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Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Chess Special

Posted in Trivia, Who wants to be a millionaire chess special, tagged on October 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Unlike the popular gameshow, features such as ‘ask the audience, phone a friend, and 50/50‘ are inapplicable here -sincere apologies. Unfortunately, there’s no money to be made from this also. 😦 However, do your best but do it alone please -no googling!

Question 1 £100

The term Stalemate refers to which piece?

A: The Bishop

B: The Queen

C: The King

D: The Rook

Question 2 £200

Which of these is usually the smallest in size when placed on a chessboard?

A: The Knight

B: The Queen

C: The Rook

D: The Pawn

Question 3 £300

Which chess piece has a numerical value above +4?

A: The Rook

B: The Knight

C: The Pawn

D: The Bishop

Question 4 £400

How many chess pieces can only move one square at a time, however, they are allowed to move two squares once only?

A: 1

B: 2

C: 3

D: 4

Question 5 £500

In which decade was FIDE formed?

A: 1910’s

B: 1920’s

C: 1930’s

D: 1940’s

Question 6 £1,000

Who was the world champion at the turn of the 20th century?

A: Rubinstein

B: Lasker

C: Steinitz

D: Capablanca

Question 7 £2,000

Magnus Carlsen had his 125 game unbeaten streak ended by who in the fifth round of the 2020 Norway Chess Classic?

A: GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda

B: GM Fabiano Caruana

C: GM Levon Aronian

D: GM Alireza Firouzja 

Question 8 £4,000

In which country was the first official Chess Olympiad held in 1927?

A: France

B: Hungary

C: The Netherlands

D: England

Question 9 £8,000

Which famous player once said ‘Chess is a fairytale of 1001 blunders?’

A: Savielly Tartakower

B: Max Euwe

C: Siegbert Tarrasch

D: Vasily Smyslov

Question 10 £16,000

The Anglo-American cable matches were first held in which year?

A: 1894

B: 1896

C: 1898

D: 1900

Question 11 £32,000

The Soviet Chess Championships was won the most times by who of the following?

A: Anatoly Karpov

B: Tigran Petrosian

C: Leonard Stein

D: Paul Keres

Question 12 £64,000

In which German city did the 2008 World Championship Match between Anand v Kramnik take place?

A: Bonn

B: Berlin

C: Hamburg

D: Cologne

Question 13 £125,000

How many times has Hou Yifan been the Women’s World Champion?

A: 1

B: 2

C: 3

D: 4

Question 14 £250,000

Which prominent 19th century player spent many years playing chess in India, and made a large financial contribution to the famous 1851 London Chess Tournament, making him a major benefactor?

A: Alexander McDonnell

B: John Jacob Löwenthal

C: Hugh Alexander Kennedy

D: John Cochrane

Question 15 £500,000

FIDE recognized and inaugurated the World Blitz Championships in 2006, who was the first champion?

A: Alexander Grischuk

B: Vasyl Ivanchuk

C: Peter Svidler 

D: Viswanathan Anand

Question 16 £1,000,000

Which of the following openings does not have a defence, an attack, a gambit or a variation named after former world champion Wilhelm Steinitz?

A: The Petrov Defence

B: The Bishop’s Opening

C: The Philidor’s Defence

D: The Vienna Game

Answers may be found in the post below, and yes they have all been carefully researched.

Mark. J. McCready

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Answers to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Chess Special

Posted in Trivia, Who wants to be a millionaire chess special on October 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »

  1. C
  2. D
  3. A
  4. B
  5. B
  6. B
  7. A
  8. D
  9. A
  10. B
  11. B
  12. A
  13. C
  14. D
  15. A
  16. B

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McCready gets tough -euphoria!

Posted in Trivia on May 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »

As the years have gone by, I have become increasingly ambivalent towards the English Chess Forum due to its conservatism, which is the thing I dislike the most in the chess world. Nonetheless, it does contain professional players, many knowledgeable souls and some established historians too. There is a chess history trivia section of which I am a contributor and recently I have started upping the ante, asking difficult questions which no one can answer. Now I’ve gone a bit cryptic and deliberately asked a question that only I on this planet can answer (the key to it lies in a column I have not yet published on my site)! Not only that, no one is likely to attempt it either, and that includes the most senior chess historians in the world even though they are actually familiar with the person who is the answer. It is worded in such a way, no one is going to get it. Or has McCready got it all wrong and is going to be shot down in flames? Is this nothing more than some sort of Killing Joke? Want to see what it is?

English Chess Forum

It’s cryptic and quite unlikely to be answered seeing as no one will know the answer. This will be the second question in the last three that will not get an answer 🙂

What was the other one?

English Chess Forum

I should add that this is answerable if you know where to look. It is buried deep within a publication and isn’t googleable. No one answered it though.

Facebook

Twitter/X

To conclude, is McCready going to get super-tough and ask even harder questions, perhaps in a verbose manner with jargon thrown in? Naughty naughty! 🙂

Mark. J. McCready

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