This General Meeting is also an opportunity for our members to present documents from their collections. Claes Løfgren, for example, presented a remarkable handwritten letter from Aaron Nimzowitsch and put it into context. As you can see, part of the document is missing, and Claes explained to me that it is likely that Nimzowitsch's autograph was cut out before the letter was acquired.

Here is an extract (corrected - the game played is Nimzowitsch's) from the presentation text for the General Meeting on 13 and 14 September 2024.

The second lecture of the CH&LS General Meeting was given by Matthias Johansson on the subject of the Chess Olympiads before the Second World War. As we can see, these Olympiads were strongly influenced by the political events of this troubled period in history.

Here is an extract from the presentation text for the General Meeting on 13 and 14 September 2024.

Here is the support for the 1^st conference given in Budapest as part of the CH&LS General Assembly.

Dominique Thimognier presents an in-depth study of the creation of FIDE in 1924.
Dominique focuses in particular on the various protagonists of this creation, and he has uncovered some previously unpublished documents.
This work complements my series of articles on this website about events in Paris in 1924.

Here is an extract from the presentation text for the General Meeting on 13 and 14 September 2024.

by Jean Oliver Leconte

Fourth and last article dedicated to the 1^st Chess Olympiad and the creation of the FI(D)E.

Part one: The 1st Chess Olympiad and creation of the FI(D)E - The first steps (1/4)
Part two: The 1st Chess Olympiad and creation of the FI(D)E - Getting organized (2/4)
Part three: The 1st Chess Olympiad and creation of the FI(D)E - The Chess Tournament (3/4)

To begin with, here is a photo of the participants in the first Chess Olympiad, which appeared in the Belgian magazine L'Échiquier in 1925.

by Jean Oliver Leconte

Third part of the articles dedicated to the 1^st Chess Olympiad and the creation of the FI(D)E.

Part one: The 1st Chess Olympiad and creation of the FI(D)E - The first steps (1/4)
Part two: The 1st Chess Olympiad and creation of the FI(D)E - Getting organized (2/4)

I would particularly like to thank Mr Guy Gignac, who sent me an exceptional document. It is the programme for the "International Amateur Chess Tournament", photos of which you have on the left and below.

by Jean Oliver Leconte

Second part of the articles devoted to the 1^st Chess Olympiad and the creation of the FI(D)E.

Part one: The 1st Chess Olympiad and creation of the FI(D)E - The first steps (1/4)

While the organisation of the grand tournament starts moving forward, the newspaper le Figaro ironises.

Chess and the Olympic Games

There will even be a chess tournament during the Olympic Games!
It is being organised under the patronage of Mr Fernand Gavarry, Minister Plenipotentiary, Commander of the Legion of Honour, and will take place from 12 to 20 July in the salons of a grand hotel in the Étoile district.
Most of the major chess federations will be taking part.
After the Muscle Festival, it will be a small gala for the Brain.

by Jean Oliver Leconte

The year 2024 corresponds to the centenary of the creation of FIDE - Fédération Internationale Des Échecs. More precisely, it was in Paris on 20 July 1924 that FIDE was created (originally called FIE - The current acronym FIDE would be adopted at the 2^nd FIDE Congress in Zurich, Switzerland in 1925, but the meaning did not vary: Fédération Internationale Des Échecs).

I propose to retrace this creation of FIDE, as well as the first Chess Olympiad via several articles. These two events are closely linked. Moreover, as we shall see, the idea of an International Chess Federation came after the launch of the organization of the international chess tournament alongside the Olympic Games.

This first part is devoted to the beginnings of the first Chess Olympiad.
To date, the FFE has said very little about this FIDE centenary event. You can find an article on its website here. But these events seem to me to be very meager (reconstruction of the act of signing the creation of FIDE and giant simultaneous).

There is no mention in these events, for example, of Pierre Vincent, the driving force behind the creation of FIDE. His grave is in the Montmartre cemetery.

Here is the support for the last presentation at the CH&LS general meeting in Belfort on Saturday 2 September.

Henri Serruys (Belgium) presented the very special January 1888 issue of the BCM (British Chess Magazine).

Henri pointed out a curious feature of the January 1888 issue of BCM.

In fact, this issue of BCM was printed twice with slightly different layouts, by two different printers.

The CH&LS General Meeting concluded with two presentations of collectors' books.

The first was by Jurgen Stigter (Netherlands) and the Academy of Games.

Extract from the presentation at the AGM on Saturday 2 September: Annual Meeting of the CH&LS in Belfort
In German on the ChessBase website, by Herbert Bastian: Jahrestreffen der CH&LS in Belfort

A fascinating day at the municipal library ended with a talk by Dr Jurgen Stigter on the classic works devoted to the popular games of the time, (...). Jurgen used the example of draughts to show that it is not always possible to draw reliable conclusions about the spread of the game from the contents of books, as draughts, although a popular game, is not mentioned in some of them.

Herbert Bastian (Germany) devotes a large part of his spare time to studying the Chapais manuscript, a revolutionary manuscript for the game of chess in its day.

Extract from the presentation at the AGM on Saturday 2 September: Annual Meeting of the CH&LS in Belfort
In German on the ChessBase website, by Herbert Bastian: Jahrestreffen der CH&LS in Belfort

Let us leave the floor to Herbert Bastian:

I was then given the honour of reporting on the state of research on the Chapais manuscript, Mennerat's most important contribution to chess history. The chess-historical significance of the work is now well understood and will be described in my forthcoming book on it. Chapais coined the concept of opposition, which is extremely important for endgame theory, and was the first to use the multifunctional king movement (as I call it) in a whole series of examples, which only became generally known through the famous Réti study of 1921. Chapais was the first to study the endgame king and two knights against king and pawn, which Alexei Troitsky (*1866-†1942) later used as a model, and probably communicated with André Danican Philidor (*1726-†1795) about the endgame king, rook and bishop against king and rook. My investigations of various kinds have used a variety of clues that Chapais could be a pseudonym and in fact the famous French mathematician Gaspard Monge (*1746-†1818) is hiding behind it. Even if there is no 100% proof, the weight of circumstantial evidence is, in my opinion, overwhelming.