My schools taught me some pretty weird things. In my 11th grade gym class, we learned how to juggle. For real. And we got graded on it. 10% of my grade was my ability to juggle three balls ten times in a row. Thankfully, I’m an awesome juggler and got 10/10. I’d like to believe that my juggling had an integral role in me getting accepted into college.
Looking even further back in my education, in the 5th grade, there was an entire unit in my math class devoted to teaching us how to play chess. Again, for real. We would pair up every day and play chess. That was that class. Unlike juggling though, I sucked at chess. I still suck at chess.
So needless to say, I’d have an easier time completing this world record than Alik Gershon will. Gershon, is currently sitting in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square trying to break the record for most consecutive chess matches against ranked chess players. Gershon, a chess grandmaster (whatever that means), is attempting to play 520 matches and hopes on winning about 80% of them.
The current record is held by an Iranian chess grandmaster, but I’ll pretend that this isn’t a political thing.
As I said earlier, I would have an easier time beating this record. As far as I’m aware, it doesn’t say anything about having to win the matches. So while Gershon will be spending precious endurance time trying to beat his opponents, I will simply admit that I’m a terrible chess player and let these ranked players beat me. I predict that I would lose every match in 10 moves or less. Probably less.
So have fun Gershon. Because next week, I’m going for 521.
