The first Team Chess Tournament had been held by coinciding the Games of the 8th Summer Olympics in Paris, 1924. The core of the organizing committee were the Frenchmen Pierre Vincent and Alexander Alekhine. Although officially this was not part of Olympic games and the winners were not given official Olympic medals, the rules of the Olympiads applied, among them a ban on professionals imposed by IOC at the very beginning of the Olympic movement. However the Chess Olympic Games, as the tournament was referred to as in the past, is not recognized as official Chess Olympiad not only because it was not organized by FIDE (established parallelly to the event) but first of all because of a format. 55 players representing 18 countries arrived to Paris. They were decided to be split into 9 preliminary groups of 5, a winner of each qualifying into the Championship Final while the rest joined 8-round Swiss consolation tournament. The Dutchman Van Linschooten honourably withdrew from the competition to make the splitting smoother. The final team order was decided on the basis of the total points obtained by each nation's players in the two heats (the preliminaries and the finals). It must be stressed that the overall team results are highly disputable, since the majority of the nations taking part were represented by fewer than four players; moreover players from the same country competed against each other in the course of the event. The winner of the individual tournament earned the title of the "Amateur World Champion".

World's top players unfortunately did not appear in Paris. There were some decent players - like Euwe, Colle or Hasasi - in the field, but nothing more. The preliminary stage did not bring much surprises. Vajda (Hungary) kicked out master of Belgium Koltanowski from the final, Schulz (Czechoslovakia) was wiped out by the Spaniard Golmayo. Apšenieks from Latvia and Tschepurnoff from Finland were the only two to have qualified with 5 consecutive wins. Golmayo and Palau (Argentina) qualified thanks to superior Berger in favour of Schulz and Romi (Italy), respectively. Hungary and Latvia had two players in the Championship final, Belgium, Netherlands, Finland, Spain and Argentina had one. Czechoslovakia, France and Poland were big losers of the preliminaries, since no one from these nations went through.

As the finals began, Golmayo kicked off with impressive pace earning 2½ points out of 3, ahead of Colle and Havasi, 2 each. Euwe (who a. o. beat Matisons) and Tschepurnoff set the pace in the middle stage of the race. Colle, Tschepurnoff and Euwe were in the lead after 6th round, 3½ points each (Colle yet to have a rest day), ahead of Matisons and Golmayo - 3. Unfortunately Euwe and Tschepurnoff's finish was awful and they were thrown down the table, as well as Golmayo. Both Latvians went on the top of the group because of their impressive final spurt. Colle might have levelled on points with both Latvians had he only beaten Matisons in the very last round, but he barely drew. Hermanis Matisons, the young Latvian master was proclained the "World Amateur Champion" and received gold medal, his team-mate Apšenieks, the runner-up, and Colle who finished third were awarded with the silver-plated medals and the rest of the finalists received bronze medals.

The Czech Hromádka won the consolation cup comfortably ahead of his team-mate Schulz and Voellmy for Switzerland. Behting (Bētiņš) of Latvia played very well in the final phase but he had to recover from his poor preliminary play. Romi, who missed the final by the fraction struggled in the final section and Malmberg of Finland drew all of his 8 games of the final stage. The winner was awarded same medal as the Championship Final participants.

Czechoslovakia missed the individual final and thanks to that they outplayed easily their weak consolation cup opposition winning the team classification a point ahead of favoured Hungary, who earned another one point advantage over Switzerland. Latvia had only three players in the squad and their 4th position must be considered immense success, since two of them won individual tournament and the last one brought as much as 8 points in overall. France, the hosts, were down in 7th place shared with Poland, who sent their third suit to Paris. Belgium were hoping for more but not with poor Jonet in the squad. As we have already mentioned Holland were deprived of one man, and because of that they were down in 11th.

On July 20th, the last day of the games, 15 delegates from all over the World signed the proclamation act of the International Chess Federation (originally known as Fédération Internationale des Échecs in French) and elected Dr. Alexander Rueb of Holland the first FIDE president. Latin motto Gens una sumus ("we are one family") became official and well-recognized watchword of the chess unity. Below is the historic list of 15 founders of FIDE: Abonyi (Hungary), Grau (Argentina), Gudju (Romania), Marusi (Italy), Nicolet (Switzerland), Ovadija (Yugoslavia), Penalver y Zamora (Spain), Rawlins (Great Britain), Rueb (Netherlands), Skalička (Czechoslovakia), Smith (Canada), Towbin (Poland), Tschepurnoff (Finland), Vincent (France), Weltjens (Belgium).

Sum of points scored in the preliminaries and in the finals contributed to team's overall score. No tie-breaks were used. Please note: players representing same nation were allowed to play each other.

Potemkine and Kahn were Russian expatriates who lived in France. They were recorded as "Russia" in the tournament. It was not correct. The communist state Soviet Union existed since 1922.

Mrs. Edith Holloway for Great Britain was the first woman to have appeared at the Olympiads. The officially recognized Olympiads did not enjoy participation of women until 1950.

The Swiss system used in the consolation cup was apparently a little bit different from today's standards since the runner-up was paired with the last player from the table in the very last round...