Thursday, July 18, 2013

Pestaño: The best performances of all time

Chessmoso
Thursday, July 18, 2013

ACCORDING to Wikipedia, securing a perfect score (100 percent) in a world-class tournament is very rare. These were achieved mostly by world champions.
Those who did it are Gustav Neumann at Berlin in 1865 (34/34); Henry Atkins in Amsterdam 1899 (15/15); Emanuel Lasker in New York in 1893 (13/13); José Raúl Capablanca in New York in 1913 (13/13); Alexander Beliavsky in Alicante in 1978 (13/13); Alexander Alekhine in Moscow in 1919–20 (11/11) and Bobby Fischer in the US Championship of 1963/64 (11/11).
Vera Menchik won four consecutive Women’s World Chess Championship tournaments with perfect scores, a total of 45 games (8-0 in Prague 1931, 14-0 in Folkestone 1933, 9-0 in Warsaw 1935, and 14-0 in Stockholm 1937) . She was a British-Czech chess player who gained renown as the world’s first women’s chess champion. She also competed in Open chess tournaments, defeating many of men’s players, including future World Champion Max Euwe.
Another woman, Valentina Gunina won the Women’s section of the 2010 Moscow Blitz tournament with a 17/17 score.
Carlos Juarez has won the national championship of Guatemala 24 times, an all- time record in National championships. He was here in Cebu in 1992 at the invitation of Cepca to play a simul tournament together with Jaime Sunye-Neto of Brazil , Walter Arencibia of Cuba and Eugene Torre.
The Philippines’ pride Wesley So scored 9/9 in the 2011 Inter-Provincial Chess Team Championship, He won the gold medal in men’s blitz in the 2011 SEA Games 2011 in Indonesia with a score of 9/9 and a rating performance of 3183,and also won the 2013 Calgary International Blitz Championship with a score of 9/9.
Incidentally last July 15 Wesley , a student at the Webster University in Saint Louis, captured the gold medal at the 27th Summer Universiade in Kazan after tie-breaks.
After nine rounds of play in the men’s section, nine players shared the first place with 6.5 points each.
Wesley So won the gold medal, Zaven Andriasian from Armenia took the silver, while the previous winner Li Chao from China, got with bronze.
The tournament director required Wesley to play an Armageddon game with Andriasan, although according to Susan Polgat, it was not necessary and a breach in the rules.
Wesley still won despite playing with the black pieces.
Bobby Fischer had a string of 19 consecutive wins against some of the very best players in the world. He won his last six games n the 1970 Palma de Mallorca Interzonal . In the quarterfinals of the Candidates Matches leading to the world championship, he blanked Mark Taimanov 6-0. In the semifinals, Fischer clobbered Bent Larsen by the same score. In the Candidates Match final, Fischer beat former World Champion Tigran Petrosian in the first game before Petrosian snapped the streak by beating Fischer in the second match game.
Garry Kasparov placed first or tied for first in 15 individual super-tournaments, from 1981 to 1990. This amazing performance was broken by Vasily Ivanchuk at Linares 1991, where Kasparov placed second, half a point behind him, Capablanca played for eight years without a loss (1916 to 1924) in 63 games , including his World Chess Championship 1921 victory over Emanuel Lasker.
Mikhail Tal had a string of 95 tournament games without a loss (46 wins and 49 draws) in 1973-74.
Cepca. The monthly tournament will be held this Sunday July 21 at 1 p.m. at the Deepblue Cafe, SM City.
The format is five-round Swiss and the handicapping time control is 15 minutes for Class A players and 20 minutes for Class B.
The champion will qualify for the grand finals this December. Those who already qualified are Lawyer Jong Melendez (January), NM Arnold Cadiz (February), Percival Fiel (March), Maggi Dionson (April), Manuel Abucay (May), and Jun Kidlat (June).
(boypestano@gmail.com,www.chessmoso.blogspot.com

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