Susan Polgar Simul Record

Been reading she broke 4 different records during this marathon simul, and still have not seen any coverage from the major news centers here in the states. CNN usually has time for the "light" stories of the day, for example they'll cover a hot dog eating contest from Japan, or the person growing the largest watermelon, but records being broken in chess just one state to the south of their home base in Atlanta, and nothing. This gal is doing just about everything she can to get the game popularized and still can't get her props. It's shamefull.

According to Susan's blog, the field of contenders was going to be stronger than they had first anticipated...there were more adults than they had first thought would participate, and of those who participated, at least 40 Class "A" players were present, and at least 4 Masters. Not exactly a walk in the mall (the pun is intended!). In other words, a good many of the players were not patzers!

Regards,

Bill

The simul did get some TV coverage on the WNBC (New York area) breakfast news at about 6 30 am the day after. There was a short piece of video footage with voice over by a reporter followed by a brief discussion between the anchors who were full of admiration for the effort. All in all it must have lasted about 30 seconds but it is certainly better than nothing!

That seems high considering that 40 experts would be around a third of the active players over 2000 in the entire state of Florida, including two dozen strong masters who likely didn't play.

Cool that it made the news. Footage of chess, simuls and blitz especially, is always very impressive to watch.

Getting things on the news is all about contacts. After meeting a few producers here in NY it's never any trouble to get Garry time on TV when something's up in Russia or with his various careers. At least you get a foot in the door. Cable news in particular is always desperate for some people who can drop into the studio. 24 hours is a lot of time to fill. MAKING the news is a little different. Unless you've killed someone and still have the bloody knife it's tough to get into a 30-min broadcast.

I think the amount of reported coverage is perfectly natural, given that the general public's interest in our game is virtually zero.

It's nobody's fault, really. Chess is a noble game practiced by a few and that's all there is to it. I applaud the efforts of people like Susan Polgar, who in trying to promote her own interests, is also promoting the game. I wish her and her team the best of luck.

BTW, what's the deal with Susan's claim of being a "4-time Women's World Champion"? I know she was Women's World Champion and the strongest female player at that time, but the claim is, at best, misleading. Kasparov is not a "7-time World Men's Champion".

The rest of her resume is padded with similar and UNNECESSARY exaggerations of her very real and deserved achievements. I think her accomplishments are indisputable and her image really suffers because of this dubious "enhancement".

L Bacan

you are 100% spot on. Polgar's "multiple" world championships include team and blitz championships. She was also quick to have on her resume being the #1 ranked female player in the world when Judit was very temporarily inactive when she had her child. Note in the USA-Russia match she was board 1 ahead of Stripunsky (ok), Gulko (hmm), and Onischuk (???. Personally I think she has the USCF snowed. When she lost to a 1700 at the USATE the game was hidden amongst the other in CL. If Yermo lost to a 1700 there'd be a friggin 2 page expose on in. Everything is padded and most of her promotions are self serving under the guise of helping chess. Sounds harsh but just MHO. On the other hand, I have all the respect in the world for her tremendous sister Judit, a great player that does not need to wave her gender around to get attention.

Speaking of exaggerations, how legitimate is the ‘consecutive games’ record? Can games that occurred simultaneously also be considered to have been played consecutively? Admittedly a minor point but it speaks to the exaggerated nature of the hype she (or her people) try to generate around her accomplishments. Isn’t it impressive enough that the lady played 326 games at one time and also managed to play 1,131 games in a 17+ hour period?

I agree, Fluffy.

My personal opinion (and I find her to be a pleasant person - my only knowledge being shaking hands while introduced at her club in Forest Hills, NY and playing a couple of blitz games with Paul Truong, her agent, also a pleasant person in my experience) is that this prectice (of aggrandizing her achievements) is unnecessary and casts a nasty shadow on what has otherwise been a brilliant chess career. Her accomplishments can't be questioned; I wish the same could be said about her resume.

I dunno. As distasteful as self-promotion can be - and I've nitpicked about this stuff regarding Susan and the Truongali in the past - if you have goals, personal and/or public, for profit or for charity, you have to blow your own horn long and loud. It's not like chess achievement at the board is going to make the news in the US.

I don't support exaggeration on a resume, but if you're going to try to break through to the outer world, you're inevitably going to annoy the insiders like us, just like Kasparov did. You have to oversimplify and to call attention to yourself. Ambition is rarely pretty, even if done for the best motives. And what exactly would selfless promotion be? She's a famous chessplayer, what is she supposed to do, give anonymous simuls with a bag on her head?

And not to get Ayn Randian on y'all, but even if she pocketed 100% of the proceeds and spent it all on gold chess sets and fine port, so what? She's not allowed to make a buck? Is this the USA of the all-mighty dollar or not? Last I checked she has a family to feed and humble pays crap-all. As it is, chess benefits directly and indirectly from her public activities. What on earth is "the guise of helping chess"? It either does or it doesn't, regardless of primary intent. I seriously doubt even those who detest the thought of a strong woman calling attention to herself think she's doing any damage to the game or the game's reputation here or anywhere. Let's not blow fudging a resume a bit into that.

I very much doubt that Susan Polgar is exaggerating her accomplishments (if true, which is not clear) to fuel her own ego. She's doing all this to impress the non-chess playing public, and having grabbed their attention, to boost their interest in chess. Do we or do we not agree that that is a good thing?

Mig, I dont think she's doing any damage to the game or game's reputation (I dont see how any person can damage the reputation of Chess), but I too personally feel she stoops a bit low, as L Bacan and fluffy articulate very well. As such, any time I see any mention of Susan Polgar in a news article, I cant be bothered to read it, knowing that its likely to be filled with exaggerations, embellishments, and otherwise bloviated overstatements. I cant explain my vague feeling of distaste except to say her relentless self promotion seems to be lacking what I would call "class". She appears to be too much on the make for my taste. Of course my taste would be a matter of complete indifference to the lady in question..:-)

About 1 minute per game on average (considering her 5-minute breaks), I'm not sure that sounds so realistic. Or were people told to resign after 10 moves to help her break the record?

Mig

I understand your points. But How on earth was Polgar board one ahead of Onischuk? Perhaps it's the USCF I'm annoyed with. Polgar has a column in CL that caters to the lowest common denominator, as does most of the magazine, which has NOTHING for anyone rated over 2200. Buying the Polgars for the Nat'l Open didn't seem to do any good, other than shrinking the prize fund (I've heard). Belakovskaia is doing lectures at the US Open. I don't get all the hooplah over inactive female players. Belakovskaia? Why not have Silman do lectures? Or someone like Ginsburg? Adamson? Greengard? There are a lot of strong American players that can do these things, but the USCF is in a bigger hurry to promote the (inactive immigrant) women than to promote the game. This is not sexism or xenophobia - there is nothing wrong with including the homeboys. I have nothing against Polgar making a buck, but as L Bacan points out, her laurels ARE enough to rest on without padding everything, which to my mind hurts her credibility. Should I start claiming that I am a former World Top 10 player? Because I am, although it is only an ICC rating....

I actually like her (as a person) and my VERY minimal interaction with Paul Truong was very pleasant; I also believe she has all the right in the world to promote herself and her cause; she has every right to make as much money as she can from her past, present and future accomplishments.

On the other hand, I do not think Susan Polgar, Kasparov or anyone else (including me) has the right to mislead people in order to do any of the things mentioned in the previous paragraph.

That's my simple and clear position, devoid of any malice towards Susan Polgar - I have no reason whatsoever to dislike her and she's my neighbor, to boot :-)

Zsuzsa Polgar is a legitimate International Grandmaster of Chess. She is not a 2500 bottom-of-the-barrel rating hugger GM (those are strong too, of course) either. She shouldn`t need to be exaggerated at all. That`s plenty to be proud of, it`s an incredible achievement that a tiny fraction of 1% of the people in the world that know how the chesspieces move will ever accomplish.

But Onischuk is stronger. He should have been board 1. No ifs, ands, or buts. Not to say GM Zsu. Polgar is a bad person! In fact, the impression I get is that she is a good person. But reading the articles about her makes it come off like she`s a 2800 player or something! Misleading, at the very least.

PS: Simul record is impressive, even if they were all 900 players, it still rocks. 17+ hours?! Ouch.

I thought this was a wonderful event, great visual, well staged and well promoted.

It got a great deal of mainstream coverage once AP picked it up, with articles appearing in The Washington Post, CNN.com, The Boston Globe, The Miami Herald, Newsday New York, The San Francisco Chronicle, and dozens more. Just go to google news and put in chess.

The records listed are the ones that the Guiness Book already tracks, nothing new, so entirely appropriate that the PR mentions them. The Guiness people have always distinguished between number of opponents seated at one time and number of games played consecutively. This occurs when, at a simul, one opponent finishes a game, gets up, and another sits down to play.

The story showcased two important chess themes:
a) anyone can play (opponents ranged from age 4 to age 95), and b) chess professionals are very very good (she won 96% of the games). Both are important messages in chess promotion.

So all I would say is: well done!

Duif

While her average time of 1-minute spent per game might seem a little fast at first, realize that 90% of the games she played were braindead and that she probably walked to the board and moved almost instantly, her first move an all boards was probably instant (just walked around e4, d4, c4, nf3, e4, d4, c4, nf3) and I imagine she practiced this a little before the event since the pure stamina involved would take some training. Remember also that she did not need to win all the games, just more than 80% I believe to qualify for her record

So how many of the games went 1.e4 a5 2.Bc4 Ra6 3.Qf3 Rc6 4.Qxf7# ?

Near-beginners who know how to avoid quick mate are still going to play on until they ARE mated. But I take it the majority of her opponents had pretty much just learned the rules?

I'm pretty sure she was trying to play reasonable moves, she wasn't just going for quick mates. She MAY have played some nakamura-style 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 and gotten quick wins that way in a lot of games 2.. g6 3. Qxe5+ Be7 4. Qxh8, etc. but she probably wasn't even playing e4 in every game as normally in simuls the master tries to play many different openings (as is the whole point of being a master).

Well, if there were not a bunch of very quick mates, I don't understand how 1 minute per game is possible. Unless, as I suggested, people were told to resign early.

Think about it for a second.

She walks around a 350-board circle, sees move, makes move, moves on. For EACH MOVE, we're talking maybe 3 or 4 seconds, in the vast majority of games. If she polishes the vast majority of players off in under 20 moves - that's a minute per game. See how it works?

(I did a couple simuls when I was young and big-headed; I know how it works.)

Ruefully,

I don't see where you guys are getting this math. She's walking around, not playing a single game after another. The only thing that matters for calculating time is number of trips around and how long each trip takes. One biggest problem, and here a huge one, is that when people resign you can't compact the playing area. So you end up practically jogging through open stretches, although eventually they'll usually compact things a bit if it gets bad. She obviously wasn't playing 326 boards for the entire 17 hours. That would mean only 30 or so laps.

As to the Russia vs. US match. The obvious goal of making Polgar board 1 is to setup the world champions match. One could also argue that Sakaev is more dangerous than Khalifman(who is pretty inactive). I also reckon that she is stronger than Gulko(who keeps a high rating through inactivity). I would have said that Stripunsky was the second strongest on that team, but he went and got wrecked twice by that kid.

My guess that Sakaev 2669 is also higher than Khalifman 2653 is right. Clearly, the intent was to build drama around the World Champ vs. Champ game. Makes sense.

The math is quite tricky!

If there were 1100 games and every game lasted an average of 20 moves (a reasonable estimate, as we know many absolute beginners will resign by move 12 and many games will extend past move 30, but those going over 30 will be half of those going under 15), then the issue becomes a matter of how long it took the master to walk to the next table, wait for the player to make a move and then respond (most of the time instantaneously). This process was repeated 22000 times and if each instance took 6 seconds, we conclude that the whole process lasted 132.000 seconds, or 36.6 hours.
Now, if each instance only took 3 seconds, we go down to roughly 19 hours.

But those are rough calculations. As I said, it's very tricky, and I'm not even sure that mine is the only or best approach. It might be faulty reasoning (I'm not into math), but the topic is certainly fascinating.

Oh do come along...

People being talked into resigning? Imagine if you had queued up for hours and you were approached after 10 moves and told to resign "for the record". I'll wager your response would not be "Oh, sure thing".

Think it through.

Next thing it will be how the hovering black helicopters were beaming mental enfeeblement rays at the players to ensure Susan's win ratio was as high as possible...sigh.

Perhaps you've never been to a simul, Babson. When they are running long, especially when there are kids playing on down four or five pieces, it's not all that unusual to "adjudicate" the result. I don't know anything about this one and again, it doesn't much matter in a casual event like this one (how many knew how to write down the scores?). But asking parents to suggest it might be time to pack it in is pretty common.

Have you been to a simul before? If you have been to the one's where you have respectable club players who know more or less when to resign that is one thing. But, if you are talking about these massive simuls with alot of kids you are going to have kids making alot of moves just to last longer. I once saw a GM get so annoyed that a kid was playing on down 2 queens and god only knows whatelse by way of pawns and pieces that the GM knocked over the remaining king, 3 pawns and 2 rooks. I must say that I don't really blame him one bit although the kid seemed a little ticked.

Do not mock the black helicopters! They know where you live!

Seems to me most opine about the lack of chess popularity and then when someone tries to popularize it they pick the person apart for some niggling little inaccuracy. And make no mistake - personalities drive the popularity of minor sports in any market. Lance Armstrong (anyone ever heard of him?) recently stated that he hoped cycling's recent popularity in the US would continue but he fully realizes that it will depend on the personalities and the stories of the riders of the years to come. His story is incredible - the huge success after imaciation and near death. And I'm sure there are cycling messageboards that are nit-picking him to the nth degree as well. But the point is that the great mass of people that followed Armstrong's career and his story don't even know (or would likely even care to know) of the existence of any such messageboards. All they know is that Armstrong made cycling cool and BECAUSE OF THAT some of them will get a bike, ride it, find that they like it, and presto changeo - a new cyclist and perhaps cycling fan.

For everyone that has slammed Kasparov's self-promotion in the past it has still been promotion (and therefore promotion of chess) and because of it he has certainly brought more people to chess than have the combined efforts of all of the other GM's of the past 20 years combined.

Yeah, here's my simul story:

Jude Acers came through this area a few years ago playing different simuls and selling one of his books at book stores and I went to see one of the simuls. It was for junior players only. Acers starts out with a very short lecture and then dives into the games. There were about 20 kids and, of course, their parents and spectators (it was in a very busy mall). About halfway through the simul (about an hour into it) Acers decides that as he comes to a board that if a kid isn't ready to move he'll just start badgering them by saying "move or lose" over and over as he towers over them. His intimidating rudeness serves him well as many of the kids immediately blunder a few even having relatively even positions. With success comes repetition, so Acers continues to badger the kiddies until only one game remains. Even a lowly class player like myself sees that Acers stands worse in this game. He is down a pawn, his opponent has a passed pawn and Acers rook is a few moves from doing anything productive. As Acers completes the penultimate game and comes to stand at this, the last game, the kid is still thinking. Acers now begins screaming "MOVE OR LOSE!", "MOVE OR LOSE!, over and over like some kind of deranged parrot. The kid tries to ignore Acers' rants and concentrate but eventually he waves his hands and gets up. Acers bleats out, "then you lose!" and, presumably, crawls back into whatever whole he came from.

I had inquired in advance with Acers business manager about him appearing at the chess club that I run during his tour. It was too expensive for our club, but I don't fault in anyone for their price - it's whatever the market will bear. One of our regulars was there watching the simul with me. He turned to me afterwards and asked me what I thought and I told him "That jerk will never appear at our club as long as I have any say in it."

I actually agree with the point that Susan Polgar has no need to pad her resume, but to be fair, her calling herself the women's world champion for different events or even just the world champion seems no more absurd than when in american sports they call the winners of the World Series, the NBA Finals and other events the "World Champions" of their sport.

jegutman,

While I agree with the premise of your analogy, there is a big difference.

One could certainly advocate that the Major League Champions or NBA Champions (the correct titles) could beat teams from other foreign leagues. The premise they base this on is that both the NBA and MLB represent the strongest LEAGUES of their respective sports. I don't agree with the "World" NBA and MLB titles either, but one can make a credible argument. For Susan Polgar (despite her being a very strong player), could one make a credible argument that she could actually be the world champion?

I honestly believe that Susan Polgar is an ambassador for the sport of chess and her efforts are sincere, but the promotional methods may be questioned. I do believe that the marketing may need to be toned down with all the "Queen of Chess" and "World Champion" references.

Unbeknownst to most fans is that while Susan Polgar set the chess simul card, Zsuzsa simultaneously set the chicken burger eating record.

Why do I say such a blatant idiocy? Because I think both facts have about equal relevance to chess.

<In 1984, Hort played a total of 663 games in a simul in Germany that lasted over 32 hours. Nobody sane will ever break that duration record.

But in 1941 Gideon Stahlberg played 400 games in Argentina during 36 hours.

If Susan polgar is there, can self promotion be far behind. And it is in your face, blatant, and lacking in class. I challenge those in this forum to show a single article, interview, or statement by her where she she doesn't talk about the great things done by her, her foundation, and her sisters.

To top it all, she tries to be too pro-American and patriotic. Seems like a defense mechanism to overcome her foreign roots.

Really disgusting!

Kapalik

From the pictures posted with her Chess Cafe article for this month, it looks like a lot of the players were adults, not children as many people have put forward in posts here. Of course, these could be selected pictures, but even the line of people registering looks like mostly adults.

And whether her resume is correct or not, she is getting a lot of publicity for chess. Other athletes have made false statements about their accomplishments (I remember hearing Shaq say he had be successful at every level of basketball competition - LONG before he had a ring!).

Mig,

Yes, I have been to a simul (Spassky squashed me like a bug with great urbanity and charm)

I was referring to the post above about people being 'told to resign after 10 moves to help her break the record'.

Of course people get excited in simuls playing against a big name and don't want the moment to end - sometimes a little nudge is needed. I read once about one of the Ks remaining standing in front of a simul board and someone whispered "kid, i think he's saying he's not giving up any more draws today".

I was just making a point on the propensity of some people to always choose the global conspiracy explanation of simple events.

In the August issue of Psychology Today, there is a feature article on the Polgars: "The Grandmaster Experiment."

I don't know Babson, the time was awful fast compared to any of the computations that have been made on this site. JK. I am sure it was legit, at least mostly. I could see Paul Truong hypnotizing a few opponents who looked like they had a good position. But, Susan was probably oblivious to that. Man, it helps to have a guardian angel.

I read a news article that said that Polgar beat her opponents in three moves, so I guess she did play 2.Qh5 in many games. On the serious side, I'm not sure if the report is accurate sense sports reporters often get chess wrong.

Correction: "since" instead of "sense"

Reading it again... I believe what the reporters were confused about "check" and "checkmate." A check in three moves doesn't necessarily mean anything.

I can envision 2.Qh5 as a simul weapon freaking out a lot of local chess coaches! For what it's worth I didn't witness any early Queen moves on the part of the 3 Polgar Sisters at the National open in June. No pleas by the simul support staff for early resignation either. I did notice a couple black helicopters circling the Vegas strip however...

In regards to fluffy's comments about Angelina Belakovskaia ...the U.S. Open is in Phoenix this year. Well, Angelina just happens to be a resident of Phoenix for the past couple of years or so. As far as I know, she is all but retired from competative chess, and works in the "real world" as well as teaching chess...she is also now a wife and mother. Why not give a lecture at the U.S. Open when it is but a short commute? I understand that Angelina is an excellent public speaker and that would easily transpose into lecturing, and it is likely that only Susan Polgar herself would be able to top her in that category. Susan is already a very popular chess lecturer. Abgelina was trained at the famous Botvinnik chess school (Kasparov is an alumnus as well) so she is no slouch in the chess department...that and her three U.S. Women's Championship titles!

Regards,

Bill

It's true that personalities drive forth the things they promote, but then it's a question of what kind of personality it is who's doing the promoting.
i'm sure there are reasons and excuses for Susan Polgar to be as cheap and self-acclaiming as she is, but this doesn't mean we need to like her. Promoting chess or not is not the be all and end all on how characters should be evaluated (this is one thing i disagree with Garry about Fischer...Garry seems to think Fischer should've done everything for the sake of chess, whereas Fischer simply wasn't interested in promoting chess, and this is the source of a lot of Garry's criticism in his book).
Anyway...as for comparing Susan with Garry, i didn't mind his self-promoting because Garry had the talent and strength to back it up, his claims never seemed turgid to me, let's just say he was very confident :) But Susan...is nowhere near the best.
Btw, neither do i think it justifis her doings that she's making a buck. But you see, i don't judge her doings or think she should stop...it is simply my right not to like her or think she's doing something very marvellous.
To me she looks like just a working girl...if you catch my drift.

Yes Sacateca, it's your right not to like Susan Polgar and her doings. For the record I admire her efforts for the most part..but I don't agree with her 100% of the time. We seem to both be critical of her for oddly different reasons. Your "working girl" comment seems a bit disgusting and sexist to me..but expresses your viewpoint well. I consider her to be more of a conservative school-marm type based on her comments on the Tim Taylor "chess life" piece for example. I find her image to be very "G" rated.

I was not surprised by her comments to Taylor's article. Remember, she is from Hungary herself, and would know first-hand what things used to be like and in some cases still are. Susan happens to be the mother of two young boys, so I imagine that a healthy share of her venomous comments were coming from the "mommy" part of her as well.

Taylor's article caused a furor. While I personally found it to be entertaining, I also agree that it was not appropriate to print in a magazine which currently has so many readers that are minors. It was an "adult" story...certainly not for kids.

Regards,

Bill

Kudos to Susan!
The creditable performance by Susan in demolishing her opponents to a marvellous degree of success is really stupendous. Hope her record will be equalled nay surpassed in a long time to come. Best wishes.
R.Kesavan.
India.

Of course Polgar (or Truong, on her behalf, or whatever) is a shameless self-promoter -- at least on par with the biggest braggarts of all (e.g., Kasparov), but usually with much less objective reason.

What irks me, though, is that whenever she or her team loses, she starts making excuses. Just once, I'd love to see a game annotated/reported by her where she loses, and acknowledges her opponent's superior play (rather than blaming it on time trouble, or controversial rulings, or whatever).

People mentioned that two other received their GM titles before Susan Polgar. What three tournaments did each make their norms at? Or were the titles awarded by FIDE?

If you are asking about other women who held the same Grandmaster title that the men hold, two Women were awarded the title on the basis of having won the gender-segregated "Women's World Championship" prior to GM Polgar's earning it. These were Nona Gaprindashvili and Maya Chiburdanidze, both of Georgia.

(As you may know, the winner of the World Junior Championship is also awarded the GM title without having to earn norms, so there was some precedent in that sense.)

Susan was the first woman to earn the GM title through the norm system.

Today there are still several events where a title can be granted, or at least a norm, outside of the usual math formula.

http://www.fide.com/official/handbook.asp?level=B0101

No matter how I calculate, I got the feeling that something stinks.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2632

it is a blahblah no facts - nothing is cleared.

It does describe the very considerable amount of preparation that went in, as well as the participation of two experienced chess organizers (Mr. Schulz and Mr. Channing), so that does clear up where a lot of the players came from.

It's also clear, even just from the pictures, that there were indeed 326 players seated for the initial round of games, so that record was clearly broken (the previous had been 321).

The main confusion still seems to be over how the total number of games was accomplished. One of the questions already answered was that the simul extended beyond the mall's usual closing time.

I have heard reports elsewhere that some of the players (not GM Polgar, but those on the other side of the board) said that they "blitzed out" some of the games. Meaning multiple moves were played on one board before moving on.

That's allowed under some simul formats (one is when there are fewer than 10% of the games left, a different one is when the game "nears an end" [subject to several interpretations, of course]), but I've no idea if this actually occurred, or just which format was being used.

If that IS what happened, then of course all the math changes, as it might be games with some of the better players that generated many moves quickly.

Again, I don't know if that is what happened. But "simul" is a term that covers a lot of different formts, so under some it would definitely be possible.

Respectfully,
Duif

Josh?

Just because you have orange panties doesn't make you a "modern" chess player.

I love chess and I think that Susan is promoting it very well. Her own idiosyncrasies aside, and resume-padding, exaggerations, etc. aside... at least she is getting a non-playing public (by and large) to see chess as a great activity for both boys and girls. Most people will never know all the "insider" information that a great deal of you seem to go on and on about, and I don't care to attack or defend Susan on any of the points mentioned. I do, however, believe that she is doing a great thing making chess more visible and getting young ladies (and young gentlemen!) involved. Get over all the attacking and nit-picking, people. If you really have a problem with the lady, email Susan about it and stand your ground with the lady herself (if you have the guts for it!). Just my opinion...