Ehsan Ghaem Maghami

Sports — 30 June 2011

Ehsan Ghaem-Maghami (Persian: احسان قائم مقامی ; born 11 August 1982) is a chess grandmaster (2000)^[1] from Iran. On the September 2009 FIDE list, he has an Elo rating of 2575. In 2009, he won a 20 games combined match (four classical, four rapid and twelve blitz games) against Anatoly Karpov, played with a special rule: play to mate or dead draw. The overall score was eight wins to Ghaem-Maghami, seven wins to Karpov, and five draws.^[2]

Iranian chess grandmaster Ehsan Ghaem-Maghami has set a Guinness record on Tuesday 2011/02/08 . He simultaneously played against 614 opponents in Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti university, scoring 590 wins, 16 draws and 8 loses for a winning percentage of over 90 percent.

An Iranian grandmaster said he ousted the previous title holder on 2011/02/09 to regain the Guinness record for simultaneous chess games after facing more than 600 players in over 25 hours.

Ehsan Ghaem-Maghami, 28, won 96 percent of his games which began on 2011/02/08 in Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, making him the new Guinness title holder of the game.^[3]^[4]

Of the total 614 games, Ghaem-Maghami won 590, lost eight and drew 16 in a feat that took more than 25 hours and treading around 55 kilometres (34 miles) as he moved from opponent to opponent.

He said “Iran is great and deserves the best…”. “I walked about 55 kilometers and was awake for 25 hours. Now I have to think about setting a sleeping record. I am so happy because I achieved this new world record,” Ghaem-Maghami said.

In October 2010, the Ukraine-born chess grandmaster Alik Gershon competed simultaneously against 525 players in Tel Aviv.

In August 2009, another Iranian grandmaster, Morteza Mahjoub, played 500 games simultaneously in Tehran’s Enghelab Sports Complex, scoring 397 wins, 90 draws and 13 loses for a winning percentage of 88.4 percent.