A simultaneous exhibition or simultaneous display is a board game exhibition (commonly chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 or Go) in which one player (typically of high rank, such as a grandmaster or dan-level player) plays multiple games at a time with a number of other players. Such an exhibition is often referred to simply as a "simul".

In a regular simul, no chess clocks are used. The boards are usually arranged in a large circle or square and the exhibitor walks from board to board in a fixed order. Each individual participant is expected to make a move when the exhibitor arrives at his/her board. The exhibitor may pause briefly before playing his/her move, but will typically attempt to avoid lengthy pauses because too many such pauses will cause the exhibition to continue for an extended period. Longer exhibitions increase the risk of fatigue-induced blunders on the part of the exhibitor, especially since the individual participants remaining at the end tend to be the stronger players who represent the exhibitor's most challenging opponents. As games are finished off, they are usually not replaced and only a few games will remain in progress at the end of the exhibition. At this point clocks are sometimes introduced with each side getting a fixed amount of time. In most regular simuls, the exhibitor plays White in all the games and the individual participants are of varying playing strengths (though they are typically below master class).

In clock simuls all the games are played as normal tournament games and are timed by a chess clock. These simuls require the exhibitor to accept a substantial time handicap since his/her clock continues to run on all boards. These simuls typically involve a relatively small number of individual participants whose playing strength is at or near master class. Occasionally, grandmasters have given blindfold

Blindfold chess

Blindfold chess is a form of chess play wherein the players do not see the positions of the pieces or touch them. This forces players to maintain a mental model of the positions of the pieces...

 simultaneous displays. In such displays, the exhibitor does not look at any of the boards, but retains all the moves of the games in his/her head. The opponents utilize boards and pieces in the standard fashion, but their moves are communicated verbally to the exhibitor by an arbiter or intermediary.

Donner's advice

Dutch Grandmaster Jan Hein Donner

Jan Hein Donner

Johannes Hendrikus Donner was a Dutch chess grandmaster and writer. Donner was born in The Hague and won the Dutch Championship in 1954, 1957, and 1958. FIDE, the World Chess Federation, awarded him the GM title in 1959. He played 11 times for the Netherlands in the Chess Olympiads...

 offered the following advice to a player taking a board at a simultaneous exhibition.

If you are to stand a chance of scoring a half or a full point, there are a few things to bear in mind:

A. Be sure to take special care in the opening

Chess opening

A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...

. Play something you know well and play carefully. The simul-giver will be very unpleasantly surprised to find that after some twenty moves he has achieved nothing at your board. He will usually propose a draw to be rid of such a troublemaker. Do not accept! Your boldness will greatly upset him.

B. Play aggressively. Ninety-five percent of all victims in simultaneous displays usually owe their defeat to their own passivity. The simul-giver lacks the time to work out variations but doing so is more important when defending than in an attack. On psychological grounds, too, aggressively approaching the simul-giver is a sound and very effective strategy.

C. Don't be afraid to exchange pieces. The simul-giver will play the endgame much better than you, of course, but it is — once again — very important at this stage of the game to calculate variations and that is precisely what he has no time for. Do not be afraid!

Games

Here are some significant games from simultaneous exhibitions:

A future world champion defeats the reigning champion. Capablanca

José Raúl Capablanca

José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. One of the greatest players of all time, he was renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play...

-Botvinnik

Mikhail Botvinnik

Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, Ph.D. was a Soviet and Russian International Grandmaster and three-time World Chess Champion. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few famous chess players who achieved distinction in another career while...

, simultaneous exhibition, Leningrad 1925 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Nbd7 5.e3 Bb4 6.cxd5 exd5 7.Qb3 c5 8.dxc5 Qa5 9.Bxf6 Nxf6 10.O-O-O O-O 11.Nf3 Be6 12.Nd4 Rac8 13.c6 Bxc3 14.Qxc3 Qxa2 15.Bd3 bxc6 16.Kc2 c5 17.Nxe6 Qa4+ 18.b3 Qa2+ 19.Qb2 Qxb2+ 20.Kxb2 fxe6 21.f3 Rc7 22.Ra1 c4 23.bxc4 dxc4 24.Bc2 Rb8+ 25.Kc1 Nd5 26.Re1 c3 27.Ra3 Nb4 28.Re2 Rd8 29.e4 Rc6 30.Re3 Rd2 31.Raxc3 Rxc2+ 32.Rxc2 Rxc2+ 0-1

The following Evans Gambit

Evans Gambit

The Evans Gambit is a chess opening characterised by the moves:The gambit is named after the Welsh sea Captain William Davies Evans, the first player known to have employed it. The first game with the opening is considered to be Evans - McDonnell, London 1827, although in that game a slightly...

, won by Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer

Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author...

 as White at a 10-board clock simultaneous, was well-played enough that Fischer included it in his famous book My 60 Memorable Games

My 60 Memorable Games

My 60 Memorable Games is a chess book by Bobby Fischer, first published in 1969. It is a collection of his games dating from the 1957 New Jersey Open to the 1967 Sousse Interzonal. Unlike many players' anthologies, which are often titled My Best Games and include only victories, My 60 Memorable...

. Fischer-O. Celle, clock simultaneous, Davis, California, 1964 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.b4 Bxb4 5.c3 Be7 6.d4 d6 7.dxe5 Nxe5 8.Nxe5 dxe5 9.Qh5 g6 10.Qxe5 Nf6 11.Ba3 Rf8 12.O-O Ng4 13.Qg3 Bxa3 14.Nxa3 Qe7 15.Bb5+ c6 16.Nc4 Qe6 17.Rad1 cxb5 18.Qc7 Bd7 19.Nd6+ Ke7 20.Nf5+ gxf5 21.exf5 Rac8 22.Rxd7+ Qxd7 23.f6+ Nxf6 24.Re1+ Ne4 25.Rxe4+ Kf6 26.Qxd7 Rfd8 27.Qg4 1-0

This Elephant Gambit

Elephant Gambit

The Elephant Gambit is a rarely played chess opening beginning with the moves:...

, won by Black against a famous grandmaster, was cited by Walter Korn in Modern Chess Openings

Modern Chess Openings

Modern Chess Openings is an important reference book on the chess openings, first published in 1911 by the British players Richard Clewin Griffith and John Herbert White...

. Gligorić

Svetozar Gligoric

Svetozar Gligorić is a Serbian chess grandmaster. He won the championship of Yugoslavia a record twelve times, and is considered the best player ever from Serbia...

-Holze, simultaneous exhibition, Hamburg 1970 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d5 3.exd5 e4 4.Qe2 Nf6 5.Nc3 (Korn recommends 5.d3! Qxd5 6.Nfd2 Be7 7.Nxe4 0-0 8.Nbc3 Qa5 9.Bd2 and White had a large advantage in Keres-De Agustin, Madrid 1943.) 5... Be7 6.Nxe4 0-0 7.d3 Re8 8.Bd2 Nxd5 9.0-0-0 Be6 (9...f5) 10.Kb1 Nc6 11.Nc3 Bf6 12.Nxd5 Qxd5 13.c4 Qd6 14.Be3 b5 15.Qc2 Nb4 16.Qc1 bxc4 17.dxc4 Qa6 18.a3 Bf5+ 19.Ka1 Qxa3#

Checkmate

Checkmate is a situation in chess in which one player's king is threatened with capture and there is no way to meet that threat. Or, simply put, the king is under direct attack and cannot avoid being captured...

External links

• Chessbase.com; Israeli GM Alik Gershon breaks simul world record
• Simultaneous Chess Server.
• Bobby Fischer in a Simultaneous Chess Exhibition Video Clip
• Edward Winter
  Edward Winter (chess historian)
  Edward Winter is an English journalist, archivist, historian, collector and author about the game of chess. He writes a regular column on that subject, Chess Notes, and is also a regular columnist for ChessBase.-Chess Notes:...
  
  , Chess Note 5953, Simultaneous exhibition games between world champions. Retrieved on 2009-02-20.