The Blind Chess Olympiad is an international chess competition for the blind in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event takes place every four years, and is sponsored by the International Braille Chess Association. The Blind Chess Olympiad is the largest sporting event in the international field of chess for the visually impaired.
History The forerunner to the Blind Chess Olympiads was a blind chess tournament held in Rheinbreitbach, Germany, in 1958. The winner of the event was Reginald Walter Bonham, who would found the International Braille Chess Association.Reginald Walter Bonham at ChessGames.com Retrieved September 7, 2009 The first official Blind Chess Olympiad was held in 1961 in Meschede, Germany. Eight teams competed to play 122 games in round-robin format with Team Yugoslavia as the resulting winner.Blind Chess Olympiads History Retrieved September 7, 20091st Blind Chess Olympiad: Meschede 1961 Retrieved September 7, 2009 For the third Blind Chess Olympiad in 1968, held in Weymouth, England, 20 teams competed. Russia won the event with Yugoslavia in second place. The Polish team arrived by train in the early hours of the morning bringing with them the body of their sighted translator who had died en route (Reference: Organizer, John Graham). By the 2008 13th Blind Chess Olympiad in Heraklion, Crete, 34 teams participated, making the Blind Chess Olympiad the most significant sporting event in the international field of chess for the blind to date.XIII Olympiad for Blind and Visually Impaired Chess Players Retrieved September 7, 200913th Blind Chess Olympiad: Heraklion 2008 Retrieved September 7, 200913th Blind Chess Olympiad at the Merseyside Chess Association Retrieved September 7, 2009
Results # Year City Winner 1 1961 Meschede, Germany 2 1964 Kühlungsborn, Germany 3 1968 Weymouth, United Kingdom 4 1972 Pula, Croatia 5 1976 Kuortane, Finland 6 1980 Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands 7 1985 Benidorm, Spain 8 1988 Zalaegerszeg, Hungary 9 1992 Majorca, Spain 10 1996 Laguna, Brazil 11 2000 Zakopane, Poland 12 2004 Tarragona, Spain 13 2008 Heraklion, Greece 14 2012 Chennai, India 15 2017 Ohrid, North Macedonia 16 2021Rhodes, Greece 172025Vrnjačka Banja, Serbia
See also
Chess variants
References
External links Olympiads results at IBCA website