The Guinness World Records Slump by Edward Winter

**The Guinness World Records Slump**

Edward Winter

In 1982 C.N. 164 reported that we had been in correspondence with the publishers of The Guinness Book of Records. The result was that a number of the book’s inaccuracies were corrected and, in particular, subsequent editions added an entry on Capablanca’s small number of losses in his adult career and his unbeaten record between 10 February 1916 and 21 March 1924.

How long Capablanca’s feat remained in the Guinness book we do not know, but certainly it was still there many years later. Before us lies the US paperback 1988 Guinness Book of World Records, which had a chess section some 70 lines long (pages 564-565). This also featured the most simultaneous chess games, the most consecutive games, the most blindfold games, the longest game, the slowest move, the earliest loss on time, the longest tenure of the world championship, the highest-ranked player, the most active world champion, the youngest world champion, various women’s records, and the longest recorded session of playing chess.

The other day we had the misfortune to come across the latest edition, Guinness World Records 2005 (London, 2004), and found that the chess content has been not so much dumbed down as drummed out. There is no chess section at all, the only references to the game being four brief entries under various headings.

In the ‘Toys’ section on page 108 (immediately following information on the ‘Longest Hot Wheels track’) comes this:

‘Largest chess piece
Mats Allanson (Sweden) has made a scaled-up king measuring 4m (13ft) high and 1.4m (4ft 6in) in diameter at the base.’

The next page (still the ‘Toys’ section) has:

‘Earliest chess pieces
‘Chessmen found at Nashipur, modern-day Bangladesh, have been dated to c. AD 900 and are the oldest known in existence.’

Then on page 110 (‘Games & pastimes’), just after the reader has been apprised of the ‘Farthest wink shot in tiddlywinks’, the following is offered:

‘Most opponents in consecutive chess games
Between 27 and 28 February 2001, Anna-Maria Botsari (Greece) played 1,102 consecutive [sic – simultaneous was meant] games of chess against different opponents, with just seven draws and the rest wins, at Kalavryta, Greece.’

That is the only reference to chess in the ‘Games & pastimes’ section.

Page 153 marks the final occasion when the existence of chess is acknowledged:

‘Largest networked chess computer
On 30 January 2004 Grand Master Peter Heine Nielsen (Denmark) played a game of chess against ChessBrain, the world’s largest networked chess computer. ChessBrain consisted of 2,070 computers located in 56 countries, which simultaneously combined their processing power.

The match, which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, ended in a draw after 34 moves.’

And that is it. Not one world-class chess master is mentioned by name. There is no indication that any championship title has ever existed. Indeed, the total space devoted to chess in the entire book is less than that accorded on page 113 to an exploit by Kathryn Ratcliffe (UK), who, on 25 October 2003 and with a tally of 138, broke her own record ‘for the most Smarties eaten in three minutes using chopsticks’.

(3493)

We now have before us the 2006 edition. Treatment of chess is still a far cry from what the book offered in past decades, but a modest start has been made in the right direction, with a chess section (page 46) comprising the following four items:

‘Most moves in a game’: 269 in Nikolić v Arsović, Belgrade, 1989 (although Arsović is named first).
‘Longest correspondence’: two South African players, Reinhart Straszacker and Hendrik Roelof van Huyssteen, played 112 correspondence games between 1946 and Straszacker’s death in 1999.
‘Most games simultaneously’: Andrew Martin’s performance against 321 opponents at Wellington College, Berkshire, England on 21 February 2004.
‘Highest ratings’: 2851 by G. Kasparov in January 2000 and, the highest figure for a woman, 2675 by J. Polgar in 1996.

The book’s cut-off point seems to be spring 2005 for the inclusion of records and about 15 for the age of readers targeted.

(4035)

‘The world’s biggest-selling book’ is the boast on the back cover of Guinness World Records 2007 (London, 2006). Two pages include entries on chess: page 99 has a couple of dozen words about Sergei Karjakin being the youngest grandmaster, while page 137 offers brief features on the smallest and largest chess sets, as well as the following: ‘On 25 June 2005, 12,388 simultaneous games of chess were played at the Ben Gurion Cultural Park in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico.’ That is all. The four entries from the 2006 edition have been dropped.

Although poker has five entries on page 136, games such as draughts and bridge receive no treatment at all, and the editorial team’s interests are evidently on a different plane. For example, pages 8-9 document such pivotal attainments as ‘most heads shaved in 24 hours’, ‘fastest time to drink a 500-ml milkshake’, ‘longest tandem bungee jump’, ‘fastest carrot chopping’, ‘largest underpants’, ‘most socks worn on one foot’ and ‘fastest person with a pricing gun’.

(4682)

From an article ‘Densa and Densa’ by Raymond Keene (posted on the Internet on 21 September 2008):

‘I therefore decided to take a look for myself to ascertain whether Guinness is dumbing down or not, and to discover if their response is an honest appraisal of the situation or pure hypocritical cant?

“The world’s biggest-selling book” is the boast on the back cover of “Guinness World Records 2007”. Seven pages in total include entries on Mind Sports: a couple of dozen words about Sergei Karjakin being the youngest chess Grandmaster, while another page offers brief features on the smallest and largest chess sets, as well as the following: “On 25 June 2005, 13,388 simultaneous games of chess were played at the Ben Gurion Cultural Park in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico.”

Although poker has five entries, games such as draughts and bridge receive no treatment at all. For example, it documents such pivotal attainments as “most heads shaved in 24 hours”; “fastest time to drink a 500ml milkshake”; “longest tandem bungee jump”; “fastest carrot chopping”; “largest underpants”; “most socks worn on one foot” and “fastest person with a pricing gun”.’

(5771)

C.N. 5771 demonstrated that the text of our item C.N. 4682 (written two years ago) was recently lifted by Mr Raymond Keene for use under his own name in an article on the book Guinness World Records.

The matter has been investigated in detail at the website of the Streatham & Brixton Chess Club (reports dated 30 September, 8 October and 10 October 2008). It may be noted, in particular, that:

a) Mr Keene has made various attempts to explain his copying, and they have been proven untrue;

b) The website to which we referred in C.N. 5771 has now removed from Mr Keene’s article our paragraphs about chess;

c) Mr Keene’s article originally appeared in his weekly column in The Spectator (page 64 of the 7 June 2008 issue);

d) Over a third of ‘his’ article in The Spectator was, in fact, written by us.

(5795)

Our annual report on the chess content of the book Guinness World Records is, for the 2008 edition, of record brevity: there is no chess content.

(5237)

The index of Guinness World Records 2009 (London, 2008) includes only one reference to chess – page 264 – but it is page 263 which has the book’s solitary entry about the game: some 20 words on Sergei Karjakin (Ukraine) having become the youngest grandmaster in 2002.

That appears in a section entitled ‘Eastern & Central Europe’, and also on page 263 the reader is apprised of correspondingly impressive accomplishments in Estonia (‘largest matchstick’) and in Romania (‘longest chain of condoms’).

(5763)

The 2010 volume of Guinness World Records has a scattering of but three chess entries:

Page 106: 13,446 games were played simultaneously in Mexico City in 2006.
Page 124: 1,214 people participated in a tournament in Krasnoyarsk in 2007.
Page 177: Karjakin became the youngest player to qualify as a grandmaster, in 2002.

Grand total: 14 lines. The combined items receive considerably less space than, for instance, the illustrated feature on page 161 regarding a German who, in two minutes, ‘removed 26 garter belts from the legs of willing volunteers using just his teeth’.

(6330)