Tue 24 Oct 2006

Simultaneous Chess In Mexico City

Last Sunday (October 22), there was an attempt at a world record for simultaneous chess in one location made in Mexico City. They were trying to beat the previous record of 13,500 games being played simultaneously. No idea, if they made it or not, but there is an article up at chessbase.com about it (or you can read a similar article in Spanish if you prefer).

The nice thing about these events is always watching the fun people have participating in them. I found a photoset on Flickr by one of the authors of the above article, which includes a number of shots of the event. It's not all of the simultaneous exhibition, since there were a couple of related events, included a simul by former World Champion Anatoly Karpov and a rapid play match between a few of the international and local stars.

To get a quick overview of the scale of this thing, have a look at this aerial shot. There are 64 squares of tables; most of the squares contain seven tables and most of the tables have 20 - 25 players playing one of the local masters. I also love this shot and the sequence starting here — an example of the fun people have at these things.

It's not as hard as people often suspect for a strong player to take on a couple of dozen participants. Even if you cannot remember the game from the last time around, you can usually make a snap judgement in a few seconds that isn't completely wrong; of course, the siml giver usually intentionally avoids sharp tactical battles and tries to play on general knowledge alone for just that reason (blindfold simuls, where the strong player cannot see the boards are a different story; they truly are difficult and require a lot of concentration). However, the multiple opponents does act as a bit of a leveller, so mistakes are not infrequent and it is always great publicity and fun.

Topics: chess