A Croatian legend is that the Croatian king Suronja beat the
Venetian doge in a chess game for a number of Croatian islands.
The Croatian coat of arms was supposed to have been evolved from
the chess board of 64 squares. The first written trace of chess
in Croatia dates to 1385. A Croatian merchant had an inventory
of a small table and a chess set. Correspondence chess was being
played between Croatian and Venetian merchants as early as 1650.
The first Croatian chess column appeared in 1875. The first
chess tournament was played in Zagreb in 1886. The first
Croation chess club was founded on March 11, 1886. The first
chess book published in Croatia occurred in 1893. The first book
in Croatian was published in 1909.The Croatian Chess Federation
was formed in 1912.