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My Google search of chess records to see how Caruana's TPR in St. Louis might fit in historically, tangentially led me to the name John Curdo. Wikipedia lists him as the world record holder for most tournaments won. Here's a 2013 'Boston Globe' feature on John and his 890 tournament wins (:
It also depends of the quality of the events. I would place Kevin Spraggett at the top (or close to it). Also - Kevin won a couple of hundred of blitz tournaments in Montreal. Jean Hébert might be close behind.
Which leads me to the question, who would hold the corresponding Canadian record for most tournaments won?
Robert D. Zuk is worth looking at here. He went without a loss for some time in the 1970's. However, he made some remarks about this record of his, so do your due diligence ...
Mack: Am I right in thinking that this chappie once went an incredibly long period without losing a competitive game? 115, or somesuch?
Boomie: Yasser perpetuates this story to emphasize how formidable Bob was in the early 70's. He seemed to win every Northwest tourney for about 3 years. Unfortunately illness interrupted his progress and he was never able to return to his former strength. I knew Bob pretty well in those days. He, Peter Biyiasis and other BC luminaries crashed at my pad when they were in Seattle.
...
littleboyblue: Wondering about Zuk Winter. I played in Washington open in January 1970 and won 7-0. In that period I play many tournaments in Washington, Oregon, and B.C. Canada. I had better success in US than I did in Canada. There are a lot of myths going around about the number of games that I supposedly won in a row. I don't recall how many it was but as I had success in that period the number of won games grew like pinnocio's nose.
If you're a regular at the Marshall CC in New York, you might be able to surpass this number.
For example - this week shows the following events:
Sunday: 4 round rapid
Monday: round 4 of a 6-round weekly Swiss.
Tuesday: 4 round rapid
Wednesday: round 5 of a 5-round Swiss.
Thursday: 4 round rapid
Friday: blitz.
Saturday: 4 round game/40.
A strong player could win 5 tournaments a week, and a couple more every 5 or 6 weeks.
John Curdo played in (and won) many tournaments at the Metrowest CC, in suburban Boston, which had a similar program to the Marshall (many 1-day events).
Youre missing IM Jay Bonin. He is clearly number one by hundreds of tournament wins over anybody else.
Jay Bonin may have played more tournaments ( 3300+ according to the link below)) than John Curdo, Hans, but he evidently didn't win more than 890 of them. Of course, the alternative is that Wikipedia has erred with their John Curdo bio. Have you encountered both these American legends over the board in your many chess travels?
The USCF site show tournaments back to 1991. Since then, John Curdo has played in 965 USCF-rated events; 3687 "normal" games (76.8% result) and 364 "quick" games.
Since 1991, Jay Bonin has played in 3693 USCF-rated events. He plays in almost all of the previously mentioned Marshall CC events - and many others in the NYC area.
12,173 "normal" games (73.9% result) and 6,922 "quick" games.
When the name Jay Bonin came up in this thread, I checked my computer files for the past few years and found five articles I'd saved. Here are extracts from them:
* * * *
(2012) Jay Bonin embodies what it means to live in service to Caissa, the mythical goddess of chess. Bonin, 56, is a New York international master who probably has played more tournaments than anyone.
The United States Chess Federation lists more than 3,300 tournaments that Bonin has competed in since 1991, which is as far back as the computerized records go, though Bonin played just as frequently in the ’80s.
He has paid a price for his devotion to the game. Though he has a degree in psychology from Brooklyn College, he worked for many years as a courier — giving him enough money to survive and allowing him to spend his evenings playing chess. Lately, his life has become more tenuous. He said in an interview three weeks ago that he had not worked as a messenger for five years and that his income, which was never all that much, has fallen to about $10,000 a year, mostly from what he wins in tournaments.
He said he was deeply in debt. “Along the way, I took some wrong turns, I made some bad decisions, ” he said. He is competing less, partly because of his economic circumstances, but he still wins regularly when he does. “Amazingly, I’m still having good results because I am under pressure, ” he said.
As examples, he cited his performances in the 25th Last Blunder of 2011 and the 25th Chessaholics Insanity, two tournaments at the Marshall Chess Club in Manhattan that ran back to back starting on New Year’s Eve and continuing nonstop into New Year’s Day — a total of 15 games. In years past, he had struggled to compete under such a grueling schedule, but this time he won both tournaments without losing a game.
_________
(Wednesday, Feb. 29, 2013) - The Marshall Chess Club presents its new international master in residence Jay Bonin.
International master Jay Bonin is one of the great legends of American chess. Having played and won literally several hundred games a year for decades, he is a permanent fixture in the New York chess scene and the most active player of any level in the country.
Beginning March 1st, all Marshall Chess Club members will be able to profit from Jay's unmatched experience and top level skills as he is available to analyze games every Thursday from 4pm to 7pm. Whether you are looking to perfect your opening or trying to find the best strategic plan in the middle game, just bring the score of your recent tournament or casual game and Jay will analyze it with you.
We offer this service free of charge to Marshall Chess Club members. Non-members are welcome to attend for a $10 charge.
________
Most Active Master By Sam Sloan
International Master Jay Bonin is probably the most active chess player in the world of his strength. He plays an average of 140 rated tournaments and 700 games per year. He first became a master in 1975. At age 57 his rating has declined about 100 points. His FIDE rating was 2419 in 2000. Now it is down to 2319. He has played in 3391 USCF rated tournaments since November 1991. His USCF rating is 2448.
Considering the number of games he has played, relatively few of his games are published in the chess databases. He plays his own unusual opening systems. Since he does not study his own games he usually throws his scoresheets in the trash. This has led his fans to scramble to get his scoresheets out of the trash cans. Nowadays he throws them in trash cans on the public streets to discourage this practice.
Jay Bonin has played an estimated 25,000 rated games against masters. (That is twenty-five thousand games). We are trying to collect as many of these games as we can from his opponents. Please send us as many games as you can in PGN Format. We then plan to publish his most representative two or three thousand games in a book.
Sam Sloan August 2012
________
The Making of a Master (Inside Chess, 1988)
Jay Richard Bonin, born in Flushing, New York, attended James Madison High School, alma mater of GM Joel Benjamin and FM John Litvinchuk. At age 17, while working as a camp counselor, he flipped through the stations on the camp tv set, settling at last on Channel 13. That simple act was to change his life. The year was 1972. There on the screen was Shelby Lyman, expounding on the Fischer- Spassky match, and there began Bonin's career in chess. Soon after, he walked into New York's Marshall Chess Club. In November of 1972, he joined. The next month, he heard about chess tournaments. Then he took his first (and only) group lesson, from 1M George Kane. He was hooked. Bonin's rose quickly through the ranks, achieving Master status in February of 1977, not quite five. years after first entering the Marshall Chess Club.
"The Master title was a big event for me back then," Bonin recalls. "I got it at the '76 Inter-Collegiate playing for Brooklyn College. We played South Florida in one of the later rounds. Their first board was Larry Christiansen, then a Senior Master. Our team lost, but I beat him."
In Bonin's case, success begat success. The young master continued scoring well and in 1979 began a side-career as a chess teacher and simul lecturer, activities that occupy his time to this day. The breakthrough year? 1982, during the Frank Marshall International.
"I beat Sammy Reshevsky," says Bonin. "He was my first GM scalp." After that, Bonin knew he was on his way. Later in 1982 he took first in the New York State Championship, defeating GM Dmitry Gurevich in the process, with a score of 5.5 from 6. Then came his 1M-norm performances. The first was in April, 1983, at Bill Goichberg's Frank Marshall International. Two years later, in 1985, a 6-3 result in a Round-Robin sponsored by Barclay's Gallery (won by GM Lev Alburt) gave him his second norm. Then, in the 1985 New York Open, he beat Yugoslav GM Bosko Abramovic and drew GMs' Browne, Torre, Shamkovich and IMs Zuckerman and I. Ivanov - good enough for his third, and final, 1M norm.
1M Bonin has continued his winning ways. His most noticeable successes: the 1987 Marshall Chess Club Championship (first) and, a year earlier, the 1986 New York Open. The latter event saw him go on the greatest five-round tear of his career. After Round 1, up against GM Florin Gheorghiu, he was 1-0. After Round 2, playing 1M Boris Kogan,' he went to 2-0. Round 3 was a tough game against GM Lev Alburt. 3-0. Then followed two hard-fought draws. His opponents: GMs Nick deFirmian and Yehuda Grunfeld. "Of course," adds Bonin, modestly, "I fell apart after that. I just wish I knew what I was doing right those five rounds."
Last edited by Wayne Komer; Friday, 5th September, 2014, 12:23 PM.
Just to give a picture of Jay Bonin's tournament wins I did the count a couple of years ago and did not complete it but stopped at 1000 tournament wins just to satisfy myself if someone had actually won a thousand tournaments +. I cant find my data. However I did go back and checked his records and one section of 50 tournaments from 1991/92 produced 20 tournament wins - there are 72 sections!! - you do the math. - or do exhaustive checking of each tournament. Now that is only since 1991. Hes been playing tournament chess since 1972 and in 1977 became a master. There is no way ultimately of knowing a total of tournament wins but I am certain its over 1000 (I would gather well over a 1000). Admittedly many of those are quads but for statistics purposes those are counted as tournaments. I dont want to take away from the legend of John Curdo but amongst his many tournament wins are small club round robins. It there is any record there it is safe in Jay Bonin's hands.
Jay Bonin may have played more tournaments ( 3300+ according to the link below)) than John Curdo, Hans, but he evidently didn't win more than 890 of them. Of course, the alternative is that Wikipedia has erred with their John Curdo bio. Have you encountered both these American legends over the board in your many chess travels?
I have played in tournaments with Jack Curdo and analysed with him but never played him. I played Jay Bonin a couple of times in the 80's and lost to him. Both are intense competitors - Jack looks visibly intense at the board - Jay looks more like a deep thinker/intellectual. Unfortunately I personally dont have any good stories about either.
I'm surprised that Jay doesn't have a Wikipedia entry, Hans. Perhaps you should correct the egregious oversight (:
Jay has 402 games at chessgames.com, which gives a peak FIDE rating of 2440. John (Jack) only has 175 games there with a peak FIDE rating of 2409. Despite the noted difference in number of games, Jack does have more 'Notable Games', 5 to Jay's 2. But Jack's aggressive attacking style, as opposed to John's more positional play, does tend to lead to more 'Notable Games' (:
Here's one of those 5, a battle between 2 very seasoned veterans, where Jack (then still a youngster in his 63rd year) used the "Canal Attack" to make short work of Robert Byrne (3 years Jack's senior).
Reading this thread led me to buy Forty Years at the Top, John Curdo’s Chess Career by John Curdo, edited by Bob Sanchez, Chess Enterprises (1988).
I paid about $50 and most copies are priced above this on the used book market.
It has 126 annotated games. Among his opponents are Weaver Adams, Pal Benko, Hans Berliner, Arthur Bisguier, Arnold Denker, Larry Evans, Edmar Mednis and Milan Vukcevich.
A few quotable paragraphs:
The ultimate testament to Curdo’s ability may be illustrated by a minor tournament acrobatic that I have always referred to as “the Timberlake Maneuver.” A strong player named David Timberlake was about to be paired against Curdo in the last round. With cool chess logic, he calculated that he could not defeat Curdo, and that a loss would leave him in third place. So he withdrew from the tournament, taking a forfeit and forcing the player in third place to play Curdo. The result: Timberlake shared second prize. Successful use of the Timberlake Maneuver requires not only a keen mathematician, but also a special kind of invariant: John Curdo on Board One.
________
John Curdo’s chess career began with a seed catalog and a yen for a hunting knife. At the close of World War II, the 14-year-old went door-to-door selling seeds for premiums. But John’s goal conjured up parental fears of severed fingers and other gruesome accidents, and his mother said no to the hunting knife. “Why don’t you get that nice little chess set instead?” she asked.
Chess instruction was scant in the 1940’s, so John was on his own. When he wangled his way into the adult section of the library, he discovered Francis Wellmuth’s Golden Treasury of Chess, and played over each of the 540 games several times. “I had a great teacher,” John concluded, “Me!”
_______
In the wake of the Fischer Boom, he played in as many as 44 tournaments a year. He found it very difficult to work all week. If he had a good tournament, he would still be pretty high when he got to work on Monday. “Come Tuesday or Wednesday I’d get irrational over daily work problems.” His pressure job was driving him up the wall. He suffered from mental exhaustion, but he kept himself in good physical shape. He had a pressure job which clearly conflicted with his playing good chess. “Something had to go, either chess or work…So the job had to go..”
_______
John averages 35-40 tournaments per year. And though his current rating is 2503 as of this writing (1988), he feels that he is nowhere near as strong as he was ten years ago.
He began keeping careful records in 1976. To the best of his knowledge, he has won or tied for first 377 times in his career. From January 1976 through December 1987 he played in 454 tournaments, either winning outright or tying for first in 265.
To continue the story of this thread - I subsequently found Chess Caviar by John Curdo up for auction on eBay. This led to my writing the author and adding these booklets to my collection:
Chess Caviar
John Curdo
Self-Published 1982
Oxford Report Cover, 20 pp
100 miniature games 1948-1981
More Chess Caviar
John Curdo, edited by NM Drew Sarkisian
Self-Published 1992
Oxford Report Cover, 16 pp
100 miniature games 1982-1991
Still More Chess Caviar
John Curdo, edited by Frank Niro
Self-Published 1999
Oxford Report Cover, 25 pp
100 miniature games 1992-1999
A quick check has shown that the booklets are not in the Cleveland nor Royal Hague libraries. This is evidently where private collections can preserve what the public collections do not!
_______
There is a reference to his first published game in Chess Review, June 1948. Here is that news item:
Curdo Wins at Boston
Teen-agers are gradually taking over most of the coveted titles in chess. The most recent addition to state champions is John Anthony Michael Curdo, a 16-year-old East Lynn boy. He made a clean score to win the Massachusetts title. Harlow B. Daly, one-time state champion and present Boston titleholder, had to be content with second prize.
Curdo has been playing for only two and a half years. He taught himself the game from a book. His progress was rapid and last year he won the state interscholastic championship. His crucial game against Mitchell:
Massachusetts State Championship
March 26, 1948
Curdo, John – Mitchell, Ward Mayhew Parker
C47 Four Knight’s Game
I am 83 years old – been playing chess seriously for most of 70 years! My second tournament victory was the Massachusetts State Championship in 1948 at age 16.
I’ve played in many tournaments over the years – racking up 903 first-place finishes, including ties. At one time I was playing in more than 50 a year.
In recent years, 2000’s, I’ve dropped down to 30 – 40. Now I’ve really cut back – 15 events in 2014 – mostly local club or one-day tourneys. I finished first in 10 of those.
I’ve chosen a “milestone” game from 2014. It enabled me to reach #900. My play was overly speculative, but the finish was neat.
John Curdo 2/9/15
Western Mass. Chess Association Free TMT.
September 6, 2014
Round 2, Board 1
Curdo, J. – Cote, M.
B00 Nimzowitsch Defence
John indicated that Black’s losing move was 18…Ba6. Nicely played game with an attractive ending. I shall bind the letter and score sheet into the last booklet.
______
chessgames.com has 175 Curdo games.
Is there any way to estimate the total number of rated games he has played in his career?
Note added March 16, 2015
To my enquiry about the number of rated games he played, John sent this note on March 7:
“The total "numbers" are difficult to say the least! The USCF records only start at 1991. My (exact) records start at 1976... prior to that I have 111 first place finishes. There was not a lot of TmT activity in those early years. From 1976 on the TmTs averaged 4 to 5 rounds. To date the number of games is about 6500... 1976 - 2015. My (exact) records have 47 pages!!”
Last edited by Wayne Komer; Monday, 16th March, 2015, 02:10 AM.
Reason: note from john curdo about number of rated games
This thread revolves around two players, namely John Curdo and Jay Bonin. I had not heard of either until Jack Maguire made the first reference to John.
Well, we have almost come around full cycle. Recently published is a new book with the games of Jay Bonin:
Active Pieces (Practical Advice from America’s Most Relentless Tournament Player)
Jay Bonin and Greg Keener
Mongoose Press
2016
pb, 254 pages
_________
It contains about 130 of Bonin’s games as well as 100 tactical positions.
Among his opponents are: Asa Hoffmann, Joshua Waitzkin, Walter Browne, Roman Dzindzichashvili, Samuel Reshevsky, Robert Byrne, Hikaru Nakamura, Gata Kamsky, Alexander Shabalov and Anthony Miles.
In his Preface (July, 2016) Jay says:
Along with the late Lesley Braun, I played over three-hundred games in 1981 and we were both featured in a Chess Life article by Andy Soltis as America’s most active chess players.
Over the next 35 years, I would average between 400 and 500 tournament games a year, sometimes playing over 700 games in a single year. Most of these games would be held at the Chess Center of New York until it closed in 1984, then the Manhattan Chess Club from 1984 until its closure in 2002, and finally the Marshall Chess Club, where most of my games currently take place. Along the way there were such tournaments as the New York State Championship (which I have won four times) and numerous club championships at the Marshall, Manhattan, Queens, and Nassau County chess clubs. In 1997, I won all four of these clubs’ championships.
All of this practice was supplemented by serious study but not the kind of systematic step-by-step program that we tend to think of nowadays. Instead, I would take copies of the Chess Informant, going through the games and deeply scrutinizing the annotations and commentary until I felt I understood what was going on.
When Greg Keener approached me to write this book, I went to the USCF website to check my stats; these were the totals since 1991 when the USCF started keeping records. I had played 13,122 games, of which 8,133 were wins, 3,151 were draws – and 1,838 were losses. As I have been playing since 1972, one might only guess at how many tournament games I have played in total. The most interesting for me is the last figure: 1,838 losses. Nobody likes to lose, but I’ve taken it in the chin over 1,800 times. Despite many tournament wins I have also suffered some really gut-wrenching defeats, after which I have had to rebound, get up off the mat, and try again. In this book, you’ll see what makes me tick, how I adjust and readjust, and then also – I hope – learn how to do so yourself.
_________
(Wikipedia) – Jay Richard Bonin (born July 7, 1955, in Brooklyn, New York) is an International Master in chess, chess teacher, author and lecturer from the United States. He is known as the “Iron Man of Chess” and is among the most active tournament players in the US having played over 25,000 tournament games.
The New York Times article of March 3, 2012 gives this game:
US Chess League
October 11, 2011
Martirosov, Vadim (2247) – Bonin, Jay R. (2325)
E94 King’s Indian, Orthodox variation
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