You are here: Quizzes - Chess Quiz


Welcome to our Chess Quiz


Test you knowledge

  1. How many 'different' types of pieces does a player start with in a game?
  2. What's the least number of moves it's possible to win a game by? (Note: answer requires number of moves by one player, not the two players combined)
  3. What name is given to the playing piece that resembles a castle?
  4. What name is given to a situation in the game where the player whose turn it is to move is not in check but has no legal move?
  5. In 1813, the English master Jacob Henry Sarratt gave what name to a well known chess opening? The name was a translation from an old Italian manuscript.




  6. What name is given to the only move in chess in which a player moves two pieces in the same move?
  7. At age 14, who became the US Chess Champion, and at 15, became the youngest grandmaster at that time?
  8. What was the name of the IBM computer that in 1997 became the first machine to overcome a reigning World Chess Champion?
  9. Who was the author of the book, The Game and Playe of Chesse, which was for a time thought to be the first book published in English?
  10. What is the acronym of chess's international governing body?
  11. When Bobby Fischer won the World Chess Championship in 1972, defeating Boris Spassky of the USSR, in which city was the match held?
  12. Which is the name given to the special pawn capture that can only occur immediately after a pawn makes a move of two squares from its starting square?
  13. Which word did Spanish chess player Ruy Lopez coin to describe opening sacrifices?
  14. Which chess player was ranked world No. 1 for 225 out of 228 months from 1986 until his retirement in 2005?
  15. What name has been given to a group of distinctive 12th-century chess pieces discovered in 1831 in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland?
  16. In chess, the player who moves first is referred to by what colour, white or black?
  17. In the game of chess, what is abbreviated as "QB"?
  18. Name the Norwegian that has been undisputed world champion since 2013?
  19. What was invented by Thomas Wilson in 1883?
  20. The opening scene of which well known film features a chess match between Kronsteen and a Canadian grandmaster, in the International Grandmasters Championship in Venice?
  21. Which Russian was the official world champion from 1975 to 1985?
  22. Who became the first English player to play a World Chess Championship: (a)Nigel Short, (b)Nigel Long, (c)Nigel Small, or (d)Nigel Little?
  23. Who became the first grandmaster from India in 1988?
  24. Which Russian born author who died in Switzerland spent considerable time during his exile on the composition of chess problems?
  25. In which country was Garry Kasparov born?




Answers:

  1. Six different (8 pawns, 2 rooks, 2 knights, 2 bishops, a queen and the king)
  2. Two moves, (It's called a Fool's Mate!)
  3. Rook
  4. Stalemate
  5. The Sicilian Defence
  6. Castling
  7. Bobby Fischer
  8. Deep Blue
  9. William Caxton (1470s)
  10. FIDE (Federation Internationale des Echecs)
  11. Reykjavík, Iceland (it attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since)
  12. En passant
  13. Gambit
  14. Garry Kasparov
  15. Lewis chessmen
  16. White
  17. Queen's bishop
  18. Magnus Carlsen
  19. The first mechanical Chess Clock
  20. From Russia with Love
  21. Anatoly Karpov
  22. (a)Nigel Short
  23. Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand
  24. Vladimir Nabokov
  25. Azerbaijan