Nazí Paikidze

Nazí Paikidze (Georgian: ნაზი პაიკიძე; Russian: Нази Паикидзе; born 27 October 1993) is a Georgian-American chess player who holds the FIDE titles of International Master (IM) and Woman Grandmaster (WGM). She was World Under-14 Girl's Chess Champion in 2007 and World Under-16 Girl's Champion in 2008, multiple European Youth Chess Champion in her age category.

Early life

Her father was a mechanical engineer and her mother was a biochemist in Irkutsk, where she was born. When she was four years old, her parents moved to Tbilisi where she grew up. Her family has been living in Moscow since 2006. Her brother was a soccer player. She learned to play chess when she was five years old. Since 2008, she was trained by Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Belov.

Chess career

Paikidze achieved outstanding international chess results from an early age. She won twelve medals at European Youth Chess Championship, World Youth Chess Championship, and World Junior Chess Championship, including six gold medals, in various age categories. She won the European Youth Chess Championship four times in Budva 2003 (Under-10 girls), Herceg Novi 2005 (U-12 girls), Šibenik 2007 (U-14 girls), and Herceg Novi 2008 (U-16 girls). She won medals in the World Youth Chess Championship in Kallithea 2003 (bronze U-10 girls), Belfort 2005 (silver U-12 girls), Batumi 2006 (bronze U-14 girls), Kemer 2007 (gold U-14 girls), Vũng Tàu 2008 (gold U-16 girls), and Antalya 2009 (bronze U-16 girls). She also won two bronze medals at the U-20 World Junior Girls Chess Championship in Gaziantep 2008 and Madras 2011.

Nazism

National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), more commonly known as Nazism (/ˈnɑːtsɪzəm, ˈnæ-/) or Naziism (/ˈnɑːtsi.ɪzəm/), is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and Nazi state as well as other far-right groups. Usually characterized as a form of fascism that incorporates scientific racism and antisemitism, Nazism developed out of the influences of Pan-Germanism, the Völkisch German nationalist movement, and the anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary groups that emerged during the Weimar Republic after German defeat in World War I.

Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism. Germanic peoples (called the Nordic race) were depicted as the purest of the Aryan race, and were therefore the master race. Opposed to both capitalism and communism, it aimed to overcome social divisions, with all parts of a homogeneous society seeking national unity and traditionalism. Nazism also vigorously pursued what it viewed as historically German territory under the doctrine of Pan-Germanism (or Heim ins Reich), as well as additional lands for German expansion under the doctrine of Lebensraum.

Chess Olympiad

The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation.

The use of the name "Chess Olympiad" for FIDE's team championship is of historical origin and implies no connection with the Olympic Games.

Birth of the Olympiad

The first Olympiad was unofficial. For the 1924 Olympics an attempt was made to include chess in the Olympic Games but this failed because of problems with distinguishing between amateur and professional players. While the 1924 Summer Olympics was taking place in Paris, the 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad also took place in Paris. FIDE was formed on Sunday, July 20, 1924, the closing day of the 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad.

FIDE organised the first Official Olympiad in 1927 which took place in London. The Olympiads were occasionally held annually and at irregular intervals until World War II; since 1950 they have been held regularly every two years.

Recognized sport

World championship

A world championship is generally an international sports competition open to elite competitors from across the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport or contest.

The title is usually awarded through a combination of specific contests or, less commonly, ranking systems (e.g. the ICC Test Championship), or a combination of the two (e.g. World Triathlon Championships in Triathlon). This determines a 'world champion', who or which is commonly considered the best nation, team, individual (or other entity) in the world in a particular field, although the vagaries of sport ensure that the competitor recognised at the best in an event is not always the 'world champion' (see Underdog).

Certain sports do not have a world championship, instead they may organise a world cup competition, or they may organize both. Often, the use of the term cup or championship in this sense is just a choice of words. Some sports have multiple champions because of multiple organizations such as mixed martial arts, boxing and wrestling.

United States Chess Federation

The United States Chess Federation (USCF or US Chess) is the governing body for chess competition in the United States and represents the U.S. in FIDE, the World Chess Federation. USCF administers the official national rating system, awards national titles, sanctions over twenty national championships annually, and publishes two magazines: Chess Life and Chess Life for Kids. USCF was founded and incorporated in Illinois in 1939, from the merger of two older chess organizations. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Crossville, Tennessee. Its membership as of 2016 is over 85,000.

History

In 1939, the United States of America Chess Federation was created in Illinois through the merger of the American Chess Federation and National Chess Federation. The former had held an annual open championship since 1900; that tournament, after the merger, became the U.S. Open. The latter had held the prestigious invitational U.S. Championship since 1936.