These chess records are CRAZY.

If you prefer the video format, go see it here. It took me a lot of time, so I would be glad if you checked it out :)

The biggest simultanious exhibition

In Iran, on February 8, 2011, the grandmaster Ehsan Ghaem Maghami took on the challenge of playing against 604 players simultaneously !
After 25 hours of play, Ehsan finally managed the impossible.

He won 580 games, made 16 draws, and lost only 8 games !
His final score was therefore 588 out of 604, or 97.35 percent.

Ghaem Maghami in 2018 - wiki commons

It was a big event in Iran, as there was a big team filming and commentating the event on live television.
The event has also been organized by the Guiness World Records.

Ehsan broke the previous record established by the Israelian grandmaster Alik Gershon, who played against 523 opponents with an 86% score result.

Football personalities were invited, as well as the Iran sports minister, Saeed Lou.
Ehsan walked in total around 55 kilometers (34miles !) in the 25 hours of play !

Participants received t-shirt, the chess board on which they played, a chess book written by Ehsan, and food and drinks.
If you want to see archieves videos, check this out.

The longest (in time) chess game

Imagine playing a game that leads into patching chess.
It was the case of the game played in 1989 in Belgrade between Nikolic and Arsovic.
The game lasted 269 moves, 20 hours, and 15 minutes !

All this to end in a draw...

Here is the full game if you have the courage to analyze it :

This game was so long because the 50-move rule (with 50 moves without piece capture or pawn moves, a draw can be claimed) was replaced by a 100-move rule, which made the game dure so long.

They played a bishop and rook against rook endgame which, lasted over 100 moves.
After this game, the FIDE decided to go back to the 50-move rule.

Biggest chess cash prize

In a chess match the biggest cash prize, and by very far, was the match played between Fischer and Spassky in 1992 with a cash prize of 5 million US dollars !

The winner would then get 3,35 million US$ and the loser 1,65 million US$.
This giant cash prize can be explained because the hype was very big.

Fischer had retired from chess for 20 years and has literally disappeared since.
It was really strange, as Fischer was, when he quit, the best player ever.

Everybody wanted to see him play more.
With a this high cash prize the organizers managed to attract Fischer (but don't ask how they got this money :)

Spassky, however, was not as his best as he became 55 years old and was not playing in the top 100 anymore.
Fischer won the match with a score of 10-5, but even if the level was high, both players showed that they weren't playing at their best anymore.

However, we are not sure finally how much of that money Fischer finally owned.
In fact, the United States forbid Fischer to play this match in Yugoslavia because of the war and current political situation with the United States.

So there is a high chance that Fischer didn't even gain this money, as the US government could freeze it anytime.

However, after his death, it was known publicly that Fischer had still over 2 million dollars left on his bank account.
So Fischer has probably still made a lot of money, thanks to this event.

Most played games overall

The record of the most played games has exponentially increased, thanks to online chess.
@German11 is currently holding this record with a total of almost 650 000 games (July 2024) !

His playtime on lichess only is 1149 thousand days !
It has been almost 4,700 days since he has now created his account.

I guess it will be hard to break his record.
But @german11 keeps grinding to keep his record forever.

The longest chess marathon

This record is new and simply mind-blowing. The Norwegian duo Askyld Bryn and Odin Blikra Vea had the crazy idea of breaking the record for the longest chess marathon.

The previous record was recently established by Tunde Onakoya, who played for 60 hours consequently in Times Square this year.

During the Norway Chess 2024 event (one of the biggest tournaments of the year), Askild Bryn and Odin Blikra Vea planned to play for more than 60 hours consequently.

The event would then be live streamed, and donations would go to a charity.
Askild and Odin were allowed to take a 5 minute break every hour, they could also accumulate the rest time up to 30 minutes if they played 6 hours in a row.

The Norwegian duo trained a lot for this event.
They were very careful about the food that they'd eaten, and they maximized their rest time the best they could.

After 61 hours of play, the duo finally officially broke the record.
Magnus Carlsen was there to congratulate them on their amazing performance.
He said : "Hopefully they can get some rest now and enjoy being officially amazing."

The Norwegian duo is celebrating the end of the marathon. Credit : chess.com

A total of $6,600 has been raised to donate for breast cancer research.

They played a total of 383 5-minute games.
Here is one of the most known moves of the marathon :

Conclusion

Chess has been played for thousands of years, but people still manage to break crazy records and make unbelievable achievements.

Part 2 if the blog hits 15 likes.

- ChessNews1