The World Amateur Chess Championship was a tournament organized by the World Chess Federation, FIDE.
FIDE intended to promote amateur chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 play by holding championship tournaments linked to the Olympic Games

Olympic Games

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

, but only two events were held.

The first championship was held the year that FIDE was founded, at the 1924 Summer Olympics

1924 Summer Olympics

The 1924 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the VIII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1924 in Paris, France...

 in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

.
This is considered the unofficial first Chess Olympiad

Chess Olympiad

The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event is organised by FIDE, which selects the host nation.-Birth of the Olympiad:The first Olympiad was unofficial...

, and is the only Olympiad that was an individual event.
The second championship was held at the 1928 Summer Olympics

1928 Summer Olympics

The 1928 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the IX Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1928 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Amsterdam had bid for the 1920 and 1924 Olympic Games, but had to give way to war-victim Antwerp, Belgium, and Pierre de...

 in The Hague

The Hague

The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

, in conjunction with the 2nd Chess Olympiad.

Chess has never been an official part of the Olympic Games, and since the chess community does not make any essential distinction between amateur and professional the championship was discontinued after 1928.

However, recently FIDE has organized new World Amateur Chess Championshiops (held in 2007 and 2009) and this year it will
take place in Turkey (reference: http://wacc2011.tsf.org.tr/). The entry requirements (and thus the FIDE definition of amateur chess player) that players should have an ELO rating below 2000 (and should not have been above 2000 in the past 2 years).

#	Year	City	Winner	Country
1	1924	Paris 1924 Summer Olympics The 1924 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the VIII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1924 in Paris, France...	Hermanis Matisons Hermanis Matisons Hermanis Matisons , , was a Latvian chess player and one of world's most highly regarded chess masters in the early 1930s. He was also a leading endgame composer...	Latvia
2			Fricis Apšenieks Fricis Apšenieks Fricis Apšenieks was a Latvian chess master.-Biography:...	Latvia
3			Edgar Colle	Belgium
1	1928	The Hague 1928 Summer Olympics The 1928 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the IX Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1928 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Amsterdam had bid for the 1920 and 1924 Olympic Games, but had to give way to war-victim Antwerp, Belgium, and Pierre de...	Max Euwe Max Euwe Machgielis Euwe was a Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, and author. He was the fifth player to become World Chess Champion . Euwe also served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978.- Early years :Euwe was born in Watergraafsmeer, near Amsterdam...	Netherlands
2			Dawid Przepiórka Dawid Przepiórka Dawid Przepiórka was a prominent Polish chess player of the early twentieth century.Dawid Przepiórka was born 22 December 1880 in Warsaw, Poland , to a family of wealthy landowners and entrepreneurs of Jewish extraction...	Poland
3			Hermanis Matisons Hermanis Matisons Hermanis Matisons , , was a Latvian chess player and one of world's most highly regarded chess masters in the early 1930s. He was also a leading endgame composer...	Latvia

See also

• 1st unofficial Chess Olympiad
  1st unofficial Chess Olympiad
  The first Team Chess Tournament had been held by coinciding the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, 12th - 20 July 1924, at Hotel Majestic. The core of the organizing committee were the Frenchmen Pierre Vincent and Alexander Alekhine. Fifty-four players representing 18 countries arrived to Paris...
  
   (Paris 1924)
• 2nd Chess Olympiad
  2nd Chess Olympiad
  The 2nd Chess Olympiad, organized by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 21 and August 6, 1928 in The Hague, Netherlands.The final results were as...
  
  (The Hague 1928)