Perfect Tournament and Match Scores
In top-class chess it is rare for a player to complete a tournament or match with a 100 percent score. This outstanding result was however achieved in tournaments by:
- Gustav Neumann at Berlin in 1865 (34/34) (Fox & James 1993, p. 129)
- Henry Atkins at Amsterdam 1899 (15/15)
- Emanuel Lasker at New York in 1893 (13/13)
- José Raúl Capablanca at New York in 1913 (13/13, including one default)
- Alexander Beliavsky at Alicante in 1978 (13/13)
- Alexander Alekhine at Moscow in 1919–20 (11/11)
- Bobby Fischer at the US Championship of 1963/64 (11/11)
- David Janowski at Paris in 1914 (9/9)
- William Pollock at Belfast 1886 (8/8) (Di Felice 2004, p. 101) (Winter 1998)
- Boris Kostić at Hastings 1921–22 (7/7); Kostić was the only non-British participant. (Cload & Keene 1991, pp. 123–24)
(Hooper & Whyld 1992, p. 81) (Soltis 2002, pp. 81–83) (Sunnucks 1970, p. 76).
Perfect scores were achieved in matches by:
- Howard Staunton over Daniel Harrwitz in 1846 (7/7)
- Wilhelm Steinitz over Joseph Henry Blackburne in 1876 (7/7)
- Fischer over Mark Taimanov in 1971 (6/6) (quarter-final Candidates Match)
- Fischer over Bent Larsen in 1971 (6/6) (semi-final Candidates Match)
- Capablanca over Kostić in 1919 (5/5)
(Hooper & Whyld 1992, p. 81).
William Lombardy is the only player ever to achieve a perfect score in the World Junior Chess Championship, open to players under the age of 20 as of January 1 in the year of competition. He scored 11–0 at Toronto 1957 (Fox & James 1993, pp. 17–18) (Kažić 1974, pp. 273–74).
Vera Menchik won four consecutive Women's World Chess Championship tournaments with perfect scores, a total of 45 games (8–0 at Prague 1931, 14–0 at Folkestone 1933, 9–0 at Warsaw 1935, and 14–0 at Stockholm 1937) (Hooper & Whyld 1992, p. 81) (Kažić 1974, pp. 261–63). She only played 43 of the 45 games, since Harum, the Austrian contestant, was unable to reach Folkestone and thus forfeited all of her games in that double round robin event (Sergeant 1934, p. 324).
Alekhine scored 9–0 on first board for France at the 3rd Chess Olympiad (Hamburg, 1930), and Dragoljub Čirić scored 8–0 as second reserve (the sixth player on his team) for Yugoslavia at the 17th Olympiad (Havana, 1966), but each played only about half of the possible games (Kažić 1974, pp. 16, 95). Robert Gwaze scored 9–0 on first board for Zimbabwe at the 35th Olympiad (Bled, 2002) (Hook 2008, p. 177). Paul Keres scored 13.5 points out of 14 games (96.4%) playing fourth board for the USSR at the 11th Olympiad (Amsterdam, 1954) (Kažić 1974, p. 56).
Valentina Gunina won the Women's section of the 2010 Moscow Blitz tournament with a 17/17 score.
- Wesley So scored 9/9 in the 2011 Inter-Provincial Chess Team Championship with a performance rating of 3037
http://chess-results.com/tnr47104.aspx?art=9&lan=1&snr=17 http://chess-results.com/tnr47104.aspx?art=20&lan=1&snr=4
- Wesley So won the gold medal (Men's Blitz) at the SEA Games 2011 at Indonesia with a score of 9/9 and a performance rating of 3183
http://chess-results.com/tnr60057.aspx?art=9&lan=1&fed=PHI&turdet=YES&flag=30&snr=7
Read more about this topic: List Of World Records In Chess
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