The World Junior Chess Championship is an under-20 chess tournament (players must have been under 20 years old on 1 January in the year of competition) organized by the World Chess Federation (FIDE).
The idea was the brainchild of William Ritson-Morry and he organized the 1951 inaugural event to take place in Birmingham, England. Subsequently, it was held every two years until 1973, when an annual schedule was adopted. In 1983, a separate tournament for girls was established.
Each FIDE member nation may select one entrant except for the host nation, which may select two. Some players are seeded into the tournament based on Elo rating and top finishes in previous championships. The first championship was an 11-round Swiss system tournament. In subsequent championships the entrants were divided into sections, and preliminary sectional tournaments were used to establish graded finals sections (Final A, Final B, etc.). Since 1975 the tournaments have returned to the Swiss format.
Originally the winner was awarded the title International Master if he had not already received it. Currently the winner receives the Grandmaster or Woman Grandmaster title, and the second and third place finishers receive the International Master or Woman International Master titles (FIDE 2004, 1.2).
Four winners - Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, and Viswanathan Anand - have gone on to win the World Chess Championship.
Read more about World Junior Chess Championship: World U-20 Championship, World Girls U-20 Championship
Famous quotes containing the words world, junior and/or chess:
“Having children can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too—unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child’s trouble.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)
“Never burn bridges. Today’s junior prick, tomorrow’s senior partner.”
—Kevin Wade, U.S. screenwriter, and Mike Nichols. Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver)
“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”
—Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)