July 20th marks FIDE’s 96th anniversary. It is International Chess day thus the International Chess Federation is taking ahead its simple yet ambitious plan ahead. They are appealing to the members of the chess community and people at large to mark this day by teaching chess to someone.
In 2019, different contributors used the hashtag #Internationalchessday on twitter and other social media platforms. There were in all around 3,842 tweets from 2,342 different contributors. In this way the federation reached more than 18 million people and made 47 million potential impacts on Twitter alone.
The campaign became a trending topic across other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook in several countries. Many global brands, institutions, and celebrities joined the initiative and showed their support. The celebration was a resounding success and the federation aims to replicate the results this year too and in fact go further than what was achieved.
The federation is looking forward to inviting people and institutions from ‘outside’ the chess world for the campaign and attract more people to the sport. They want the players, friends, clubs, associates, chess lovers, sponsors, representatives in the media to come together from their respective countries and take the love for chess sets forward. They are also counting on the support from the United Nations and UNESCO.
The Federation believes that chess can be learned at any age and has various beneficial effects so they are asking people who play chess to teach at least 1 person who is close to them the game of chess on the weekend from Friday to Sunday (July 17-19). Then on the International Chess day, July 20th that falls on a Monday, share their experience on social media. This means on the day there will be more chess players. They are aiming for new one million chess players with the campaign.