PAOK Thessaloniki Chess Club
Π.A.O.K. (P.A.O.K. means Panthessonician Athletic Club of Constantinopolitans) is one of the most popular football clubs in Hellas (Greece) and the major multi-sports club of Thessaloniki (the capital of Macedonia and co-capital of Greece), with many friends within Greece and all over the world! P.A.O.K. was established on 20 April 1926 by Greek refuges from Constantinople, who fled to Thessaloniki from the City (in the wake of the Greco-Turkish War).
The club is home to several teams, including football, basketball, volleyball, handball, water polo, swimming, wrestling, ice hockey, and weightlifting. The team's traditional colours are black, as sadness for the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922 and the end of the Greek presence in Anatolia, and white as hope for recovery. Emblem of the team is a Byzantine-style double-headed eagle with retracted wings that was adopted three years after the establishment of the club, honours the memory of the people and places that once belonged to the Byzantine Empire and were invaded and conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
P.A.O.K. FC has assets of 4 Championships (1976, 1985, 2019 and 2024), 8 Cups (1972, 1974, 2001, 2003, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021) and has participated in 15 other Cup Finals. PAOK are the only team in Greece that have won the Double (in 2019) going unbeaten (26–4–0 record) in a national round-robin league tournament (league format since 1959).
PAOK is the only Greek team that has more wins than losses in their European record (90 wins, 65 draws and 79 defeats, as of April 2024) and the 0–7 away UEFA Cup win over Locomotive Tbilisi on 16 September 1999 is the largest ever achieved by a Greek football club in all European competitions.
The first Greek championship for the basketball team was achieved in 1958–59 season. The club has also won the top national Greek Cup competition three times (1984, 1995, 1999). In the 90s, the basketball team won another Greek championship and two European cups, the 1990–91 FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup and the 1993–94 FIBA Korać Cup.
