One man. Twenty chessboards. No sweat.
U.S. chess champion and grandmaster Yury Shulman took down 20 challengers at the Kellogg Atrium on Thursday, playing all games simultaneously. Total time elapsed: two hours, 30 minutes.
At the event, hosted by Northwestern chess club 64 Squares, Shulman signed a copy of Chess Life, told his personal story — born in Belarus, began studying chess at the age of six, became an international grandmaster in 1995, moved to the U.S. in 1999 — and proceeded to beat the stuffing out of his opponents, rarely spending more than 10 seconds on each move.
“His position was so much better, and I didn’t have a lot of good moves,” said Weinberg senior Alex Chun, one of the first to resign after having his queen and king forked. “It was weird — he was playing 20 games, but it felt like he was always at my table before I knew what I was doing or had any semblance of a plan.”
The “simul,” a popular challenge for highly ranked players, is the fourth-annual held by 64 Squares; Shulman, with his U.S. championship title and 2,616 international rating, is the highest-caliber guest to date.
“It’s not every day you get to play a player of that ability,” said 64 Squares president James Smallwood, another Shulman victim despite drawing against last year’s visitor, grandmaster Dmitry Gurevich. “There aren’t many grandmasters in the United States, or in the world, so it’s a pretty rare event.”
Shulman, who will represent the United States at the 38th Chess Olympiad in Dresden this November, was complimentary about Northwestern students’ performances.
“Three positions were very close, so at one point I thought one was going to be a draw, and in another I was down a piece,” he said afterward. “It was a very interesting match.”