The Blindfold King, Grandmaster Timur Gareyev is the current Guiness World Record holder for the most simultaneous blindfolded chess games played at the same time.
Originally from Uzbekistan, he won the U14 Asian Championship at the age of 12.
He became a Grandmaster at the age of 15.
His major claim to fame is becoming the Blindfold King.
In December of 2016 in Las Vegas, Timur played 48 games with a blindfold on at the same time.
The previous record was 46 games set by Marc Lang in 2011.
The exhibition started at 830am on Saturday until 3:39am on Sunday (19 hours and 9 minutes [including a 30 minute fire alarm]).
His previous record was 33 boards in 2013... I guess, what is another 13 boards?
The key criteria for the record to count is -
1) Reach an 80% win percentage score
2) All games must start at the same time
3) He played half his games with white, and half with black
4) His opponents must be of decent strength (this match was around 1700 strength)
As a result, he won 35 games, drew 7, and lost 6 for a win percent of 80.2%.
During the entire exhibition, Timur was riding an exercise bike to get energy.
He told Chess.com after the event he applies a technique called a 'Memory Palace' which involved -
translating chess moves into images and placing those images in 48 mental rooms, but to also 'trust his brain to figure out the hard stuff'.
He would assign abstract concepts to keep the games straight, a quote of his -
"If its board number 13, maybe I'll play something risky because it sounds unlucky. On board 21, that's like blackjack so it has some kind of gamble..."
During the exhibition, he kept track of around 1400 moves.
Outside of that event, Timur lives quite an interesting life.
He won the North American Open in 2012 to qualify for the 2013 US Championship where he tied for 3rd.
In 2018, he won the 2018 US Open to qualify for the 2019 US Championship where he tied for 9th out of 12 - including showing up late for a round because he was playing blitz online.
Timur is also a skilled skydiver with close to 150 solo jumps, there are videos of him jumping out of a plane with a chess board for a Chess Life magazine cover.
Gareyev is actively involved in the chess scenes of Southern California, Texas, and his current home of Kansas.
Today, we are looking at two games from his record breaking day. Both of these were played at the same time, however we will only look at one at a time.
The first game -
Thomas Brownscombe v Timur Gareyev
Now, if we're ready... let's begin.
Game 1 -
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Bc5 6. Re1 Ng4 7. Re2 O-O 8. c3
d5 9. exd5 e4 10. dxc6 exf3 11. gxf3 Nxh2 12. Re5 Qf6 13. Rxc5 Nxf3+ 14. Kg2
Bh3+ 15. Kxh3 Qh4+ 16. Kg2 Qg4+ 17. Kf1 Nh2+ 18. Ke1 Rfe8+ 0-1
Now onto the second game -
Timur Gareyev v Shenlone Wu
Game 2 -
1. e4 e5 2. d4 exd4 3. c3 Nf6 4. e5 Qe7 5. cxd4 d6 6. Nf3 Nc6
7. Bb5 Bg4 8. O-O dxe5 9. dxe5 Nd7 10. Nc3 Ndxe5 11. Nxe5 Bxd1
12. Nxc6 bxc6 13. Bxc6+ Kd8 14. Rxd1+ Kc8 15. Bxa8 Qh4 16. g3
Qh3 17. Be3 Bd6 18. Nb5 1-0
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/72345-most-simultaneous-blindfolded-chess-wins
https://blindfoldking.com/
https://blindfoldchesspodcast.com/cassidynoble/chess/