World Amateur Chess Championship

The World Amateur Chess Championship was a tournament organized by the World Chess Federation, FIDE. FIDE intended to promote amateur chess play by holding championship tournaments linked to the Olympic Games, but only two events were held.

The first championship was held the year that FIDE was founded, at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. This is considered the unofficial first Chess Olympiad, and is the only Olympiad that was an individual event. The second championship was held at the 1928 Summer Olympics in The Hague, in conjunction with the 2nd Chess Olympiad.

Chess has never been an official part of the Olympic Games, and since the chess community does not make any essential distinction between amateur and professional the championship was discontinued after 1928. However, in recent years (1990s), FIDE has revamped it with an amateur being defined as a player with a FIDE rating below 2000 and not having attained a rating of more than 2000 in the past 2 years.

Also, there is another "World Amateur Chess Championship" supposed to be held by the Amateur Chess Organisation with it being held in Rhodes in 2014. However, this is not recognised by FIDE.

Winners

 

Year	Dates	Host	Winner	Second	Third
1924	4 May - 27 Jul	Paris, France	Hermanis Matisons	Fricis Apšenieks	Edgar Colle
1928	17 May - 12 Aug	Amsterdam, Netherlands	Max Euwe	Dawid Przepiórka	Hermanis Matisons
1997	28 Dec - 5 Jan	Hastings, England	Olev Schults	Merab Tkhalidze	Nikolos Khechikashvili
1998	29 Dec - 11 Jan	Hastings, England	Viraf Avari	N.N.	N.N.
1999	29 Dec - 10 Jan	Hastings, England	Gaguik Oganessian	Dan Erichsen	Peter Mercs
2000	29 Dec - 6 Jan	Hastings, England	Sven Mühlenhaus	Vitaly Kachatkov	Nick Frost
2001	27 Dec - 8 Jan	Pamplona, Spain	Bismarck Chaverra Rojas	Antxon Serras	Miguel Rada Equiza
2001	6 Dec - 13 Dec	Bento Gonçalves, Brazil	Flávio Olivência	Darlan Veit	Milton Gonçalves Sánchez
2002	13 Dec - 19 Dec	Bento Gonçalves, Brazil	Juliano Resende Pereira	Raphael Alonso	Eduardo Munoa da Silva
2003	2 Jul - 13 Jul	Tshwane, South Africa	Shabier Bhawoodien	Graham Jurgensen	Octacílio Velloso
2004	30 Jun - 10 Jul	Cape Town, South Africa	Farai Mandizha	Botlhale Lebea	W Ndui
2005	Cancelled
2006	23 Nov - 3 Dec	Tripoli, Libya	Rachid Hifad	Talat Zinahoum	Ali Abbas
2007	11 Aug - 18 Aug	Predeal, Romania	Duca Alexandru Gabriel	Almog Burstein	Nagy Laszlo
2008	28 Apr - 6 May	Chalkidiki, Greece	Galopoulos Panagiotis	Castano Henry Augusto	Skoulakis Charalambos
2009	27 Apr - 3 May	Thessaloniki, Greece	Parlog Stefan	Toma Radu-Cristian]	Nagy Laszlo
2010	19 Mar - 25 Mar	Illinois, United States	Andrew Hubbard	Alybaev Djekshenbek	Mohammad Shaikh
2011	1 Oct - 10 Oct	Antalya, Turkey	Bilgunn Sumiya	Ozdemir Timur	Dáger Álvarez
2012	16 Apr - 22 Apr	Chalkidiki, Greece	Haralambos Tsakiris	Akinci Muzaffer Ege	Johannesson Oliver
2013	21 Apr - 30 Apr	Iași, Romania	Vrencian Lehel	Aron Teh Eu Wen	Boldoo Erdenepurev
2014	26 Apr - 3 May	Singapore, Singapore	Gijir Munkhbayar	Agibileg Uurtsaikh	Ashvin Sivakumar
2015	14 Apr - 21 Apr	Chalkidiki, Greece	Deniz Doğan	Konstantinos Michaelides	Kaimar Puusepp
2016	26 Aug - 3 Sep	Eretria, Greece

Read more:

• 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad (Paris 1924)
• 2nd Chess Olympiad (The Hague 1928)