onegoodmove

did the people she played have any chess skill?

It's a mixed bag of course, but my guess having played in a number of such events, is that the players are in the top 20% of everyone that plays chess. Most of these folks play tournament chess and can beat most casual players of the game. I played Susan about 15 years ago in a simul in Utah my USCF rating at the time was over 1900 that put me in the 94th percentile of all over the board tournament players in the U.S. She had little trouble defeating me in spite of the fact that she was playing another 40 players at the same time.

http://www.uschess.org/ratings/ratedist.html

Norm, can you find out how good the 3 winners were?

from other video I saw, it looked like she was up aganist an entire elementary school. Those kids are all in the 20% percentile? I don't doubt she's a strong player (in fact Polgar is ranked the No. 1 women's player in the United States and No. 2 in the world.) But that feat doesn't say much about her skill as Polgar played opponents ranging in age from 4 to 95.

If someone wants to beat that record, it would be much easier to arrange using computing tools. Each player has a board in front of which they can contemplate. When they make a move it gets entered into a database. There could be several terminals setup to enter moves in order to manage timely throughput. Susan would only need to sit at ONE terminal: every time she makes a move, a new board pops-up in a round-robin fashion. There would be a group of runners that replicate her move on the player's physical board. She would spend a lot less time running, and it would be much easier to set more impressive record.

Well, yes using a computer would be interesting, but then the conditions wouldn't be the same as others that have attemped the record. Part of the test is staying mentally tough while on your feet for many hours. A strong player yes, she is a grandmaster, and not many women have accomplished that.

Is there some reason why they distinguish between male and female chess players? It's not like we're talking about a physical sport where muscle mass, height, etc. would matter. Why the separation in chess? Did she break the world record for a woman chess player or for chess players, period?

She broke the record as a chess player period.

By my humble and un-beligerant opinion, it's a stupid record (just like most of them are). Games played in these conditions have little depth, and you do expect the world champ to win anyway, because this is what she/he does for a living. Why don't you get all the people playing one year at Linares, and make a simul with those. I may be over-reacting to marketing, but I'm sick of all these hot balloons.