Chess in Armenia

The House of Chess in Yerevan, founded in 1970[1]
Two men playing chess in Yerevan Vernissage
Children playing at an outdoor chess set in Charles Aznavour Square of Yerevan

Chess has been played in Armenia since the early Middle Ages; however, it was institutionalized during the early Soviet period.[2] Highly popular in Armenia today,[3][4][5] chess gained widespread recognition during the 1960s, when Soviet Armenian grandmaster Tigran Petrosian became the World Chess Champion.[2][6] A country of about three million people, Armenia is considered one of the strongest chess nations today,[7][8] and a chess superpower.[9][10] Among countries, Armenia has one of the most chess grandmasters per capita.[11]

Since the country's independence, the Armenian men's chess team has won the European Team Championship (1999), the World Team Championship (2011) and the Chess Olympiad (2006, 2008, 2012). The women's team had its crowning victory at the 2003 European Championship. As of August 2021, Armenia ranks seventh in the world by the average rating of its top players.[12] Levon Aronian, formerly Armenia's best chess player, has placed as high as world No. 2 in the FIDE rankings, and has been a World Champion candidate on six occasions.

Since the 2011–12 school year, chess lessons have been made part of the curriculum in every public school in Armenia, making it the first country in the world to make chess mandatory in schools.[13][14]

  1. ^ "Շախմատի տուն [House of Chess]". chesshouse.am (in Armenian). Chess House after Tigran Petrosian. Archived from the original on 8 August 2021.
  2. ^ a b "In Armenia chess is king and grandmasters are stars". The Independent. 13 May 2010. Archived from the original on 15 September 2014.
  3. ^ "Compulsory chess lessons might be making Armenia's kids supersmart". msnNOW. Microsoft. 25 March 2013. Archived from the original on 28 September 2013.
  4. ^ Shahrigian, Shant; Werman, Marco (1 November 2011). "Learning Chess in Elementary School". The World. Public Radio International. Archived from the original on 15 September 2014.
  5. ^ Garry Kasparov has compared the popularity of chess in Armenia with the popularity of football (soccer) in Latin America. "Garry Kasparov: "There's No Doubt That Carlsen Is the Strongest Player"". Chess-News.ru. 1 October 2012. Archived from the original on 15 September 2014. In Armenia chess became something like soccer in Latin America and it's even an obvious subject at schools.
  6. ^ Parkinson, Joe (3 December 2012). "Winning Move: Chess Reigns as Kingly Pursuit in Armenia". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 8 August 2021.
  7. ^ Moss, Stephen (16 November 2011). "Armenia's killer chess move". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 May 2021. Armenia is an obsessive chess-playing country, one of the strongest in the world despite a population that is the same as – yes, you guessed it – Wales.
  8. ^ "Armenia: the cleverest nation on earth". BBC World Service. 19 October 2009. Archived from the original on 3 May 2021.
  9. ^ Chakelian, Anoosh (May 24, 2014). "Armenia Is an International Superpower—at Chess". The New Republic. Archived from the original on 4 September 2022.
  10. ^ "Speech by President Sargsyan on the occasion of the gold victory of the men's national chess team at the World Chess Olympiad". president.am. The Office to the President of the Republic of Armenia. 26 November 2008. Archived from the original on 28 February 2021. The Armenian chess players through their splendid performance, talent and will power proved once again that our country is a chess superpower.
  11. ^ "Armenia Wins World Chess Title, Ukraine Takes Third". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 27 July 2011. Archived from the original on 5 May 2021. Chess has been one of Armenia's most popular sports since Tigran Petrosian, a Tbilisi-born Armenian, became a world champion in 1963. The country currently boasts one of the largest per capita numbers of chess grandmasters in the world.
  12. ^ "Federations Ranking". fide.com. World Chess Federation. Archived from the original on 2017-12-27. Retrieved 2012-09-19.
  13. ^ Akhmeteli, Nina (19 January 2012). "Chess lessons introduced to the curriculum in Armenian schools". BBC News. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020.
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference aljazeera was invoked but never defined (see the help page).