Bill Wall's Chess Blog

  The world’s largest chess piece is a king piece in front of the World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis.  It is 20 feet tall and 9 feet in diameter.  It is 53 times larger than a standard Staunton chess king.   The oldest chess master was Hungarian-Canadian master Zoltan Sarosy (1906-2017) who was 110 years, 300 days when he died.  He won the Canadian Correspondence Chess Championship in 1967, 1972, and 1981.  He was still actively playing chess at the age of 107.   The oldest pieces identified as chess pieces were found at Nashipur, India, datable to 800 AD.   The largest collection of chess sets consists of 438 items, owned by Tumen-Ulzii Zandraa of Mongolia. On Jan 29, 2016, the Russian State Social University hosted the largest chess lesson with 250 students and pupils.  The 30-minute lesson was about William Steinitz with a demonstration of his chess games.   On Sep 20, 2018, the largest chess lesson had 1,459 participants taught by two Muttenz, Switzerland, chess clubs ato the sc

  I was born William (Bill) Dale Wall in Raymond, Washington on May 11, 1951. My parents were William Raymond Wall and Bobbie (Brown) Wall, both chess players. I probably learned chess from my parents when I was around 9 years old in Tacoma, Washington.  I did not know all the rules, such as en passant and proper castling.  I did not know chess notation until 1969, when I started buying chess books. In 1965, I played in a chess tournament sponsored by a Boy Scouts Troop in San Francisco. From 1967 to 1969 I played on the high school chess team at Clover Park High School in Lakewood, Washington.  I was the chess club treasurer.  We played several local schools. In 1968, I won a chess tournament for juniors a the Tacoma YMCA. In 1969, I transferred to Lakes High School in Tacoma and played on their chess team. In the summer of 1969, after graduating from High School, I joined the Tacoma Chess Club, located at 719 South I Street in Tacoma, Washington.  I was a member of the club from 1969

    In 1834, Jacques Francois Mouret (1780-1837), former operator of the Turk automaton and a French chess master, sold the secret to a magazine ( Le Magasin Pittoresque ). It was the first authentic revelation of the Turk. The article was called “An attempt to analyze the automaton chess-player of M. Kempelen. ”   Mouret became chess tutor of Louis Philippe I, king of France from 1830 to 1848.   On January 4, 1835, the first column to establish itself was that of George Walker (1803-1879) in Bell’s Life in London     It continued for 38 years, until 1873.   Bell’s Life in London was a weekly sporting paper published from 1822 to 1866.   In 1836, the world’s first periodical devoted to chess, Le Palamede , was founded and published in Paris by Louis-Charles Mahle de la Bourdonnais (1795-1840) and Joseph Mery.   It ceased publication in 1839 but was revived in December 1841 by Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant (1800-1872).   It then continued until the end of 1847.   The mag