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Magnus Carlsen against 10 blindfolded. Timur Gareev plays 30 players blindfolded. I was wondering if these super grandmasters all can at least play 7 masters blindfolded and beat them.

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  • 7 masters? I don't know if that has ever been done before. Most blindfold simuls are against lower-level players.
    – Cleveland
    Mar 5, 2015 at 2:48
  • If alekhine, najdorf, and marc lang can play 40 plus people blindfolded and do reasonably well, i see no reason that 7 masters would not of been done. It is strange that I couldn't find a simul like that either. Mar 5, 2015 at 2:57
  • I'm not so sure that your analogy is correct. Can someone with the ability to defeat 40 800-1400 players in a standard simul necessarily defeat 7 masters?
    – Cleveland
    Mar 5, 2015 at 3:06
  • true, I know that timur gareev played 29 players with 4 of them being experts. That could make it seem more plausible. Mar 5, 2015 at 3:18

2 Answers 2

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This is more a comment than an answer.

The attached fragment is Mikhail Tal commenting his blindfold simul against 10 first category (approximately 1800-2000 Elo) players - as the match goes, board by board. The fragment is a part of 1968 documentary on limits of human mental abilities.

The movie is in Russian; if there is an interest, I may try to translate.

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  • That's a fascinating video. Thanks! I know it would be a pain to translate, but if you did I would certainly enjoy it. Nov 29, 2019 at 17:37
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The answer to the headline is definitely "yes". I would be very surprised if there is a top player who is unable to play 10 blindfold games.

Playing seven masters and beating (all of) them is a different issue. Remember that Kasparov limits the rating of his opponents at simultaneous exhibitions to under 2000 Elo. Of course he can beat much stronger players simultaneously, but it increasingly becomes a question of energy and concentration, not so much pure chess class.

This is even more of an issue in blindfold chess. If we talk about US master titles (I think they roughly start at 2000+ Elo aka 2100 USCF rating), I think it already becomes quite hard to get a 100% score in seven simultaneous blindfold games. But I still believe a top grandmaster would score highly. If we talk about real masters, i.e. IMs, GMs, I think even top grandmasters would struggle to score more than 50%.

Paul Morphy once played a blindfold simultaneous against the 8 strongest players of Paris and score 7/8. Maybe that's comparable to top player against lower masters.

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