Simul and the worst record

Friday, June 27, 2008
Pestaño: Simul games and the worst record
By Frank “Boy” Pestaño
Chessmoso

SIMULTANEOUS exhibition (often abbreviated to “simul”) is an event where a very strong player (commonly a grandmaster) plays multiple games at the same time with selected players, usually below master strength and club members.

In Cepca, thru the years, we have invited several masters to play with us and here are some of them (al lGMs); Eugene Torre, James Sunye-Neto of Brazil, Walter Arencibia of Cuba, Jorge Hickl of Germany, Ye Rong Guang of China, the late Edmar Mednis of the US and the late Alexander Wojtkiewiez of Poland.

…In clock simuls all the games are played as normal tournament games, timed by a clock, apart from the fact that the exhibitor is playing on all boards. Time pressure can become quite severe in such simuls.

The most famous Clock Simul was when World Champion Garry Kasparov played the Olympiad team of Germany, who were all strong grandmasters.

The new world record is by GM Susan Polgar for 326 Simultaneous Games Played with a 96 percent win rate in Palm Beach, Florida on Aug. 1, 2005. Her opponents ranged from 4-year-old Hannah Boshell, who lasted one more round than her older sister, Hunter, to 95-year-old Jona Lerman, who’s been playing the game for more than eight decades.

The Worst Performance ever is by Joe Hayden, 17, who challenged 180 persons to play simultaneous games against him at a shopping center in Cardiff, N.J. in August, 1977. Only 20 showed up, of whom 18 beat him, including Stowell Fulton, 7, who needed only a few moves. Hayden’s two wins were against a man who grew tired of waiting between moves and withdrew—and Hayden’s own mother.

In 1910 the Austrian master, Josef Krejcik, gave a simultaneous display at Linz on 25 boards and lost every single game.

Here is the full story.