New chess simul world record attempt this Thursday

Chess news and chess trivia blog (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2010

GM Alik Gershon

Hello Everyone,

The net is abuzz with the news of an attempt at the World Record for biggest simul. On October 21 - next Thursday - GM Alik Gershon is going to take on the challenge in the Israeli city of Tel-Aviv.

More than 500 players will take part in the simul! The event is professionally managed by a team headed by GM Boris Alterman, the director of Shevach-Mofet Academy whose students will all be part of the exhibition too.

GM Alik Gershon was born in Dnepropetrovsk (Ukraine) in 1980 and learned the rules of the game at two (according to his father), starting a serious "professional" career when he was five years old.

He immigrated to Israel with his family at the end of 1990 and in 1993 he was already Israel U16 champion. It was just a year later when he was crowned as the world U14 champion (Szeged, Hungary 1994) and it took him another two years to become the world U16 champion too (Cala Goldana, Spain 1996).

Alik was awarded the IM title in 1997 and became a grandmaster when he was 20. Then he already saw the peak of his career when he won the national title for adults (together with GM Boris Avrukh).

He was the founder and editor-in-chief of the first Israeli chess online weekly "Schachnet" and was the co-author (with Igor Nor) of the best seller 'St Luis 2005' which was praised worldwide and earned him the prestigious "Book of the Year" award by the British Chess Federation. Though he still plays for Kfar-Saba club at the top Israeli division, he actually quit professional chess already in 2005 for software engineering studies.

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's

www.chessblog.com

Also see her personal blog at

www.chessqueen.com