MIAMI, United States. — On February 4, 1922, the Cuban chess player Jose Raul Capablanca he played a simultaneous chess in Cleveland (United States) against 103 players, winning 102 games.
The simulcast of 1922 was one of the greatest of all offered by the brilliant chess player, who a year earlier had won the world champion against the German Emanuel Lasker.
“I played by myself against 103 players. I won 102 games, and one was drawn. But that was a coincidence. I was there representing all of Ohio, and there were players of all kinds, it was very interesting,” Capablanca would say in statements to the Spanish newspaper. abc.
Throughout his career, José Raúl Capablanca was known for performing simulcasts in various countries, giving hundreds of fans the opportunity to face him.
Some of the simultaneous games that were recorded were one offered by the Cuban genius at the age of 10, in 1898, at the Havana Chess Club.
Capablanca offered another simultaneous recall during the 1925 Moscow Grand Tournament. In the exhibition, Capablanca won every game except a draw against a 12-year-old boy named Mikhail Botvinnik.
Impressed by the young man’s talent, the Cuban did not hesitate to say: “One day, you are going to be a Champion.” Botvinnik would beat Capablanca again in 1938, in the AVRO tournament (Netherlands). Years later, the talented Soviet chess player would end up becoming a world champion.
