Rome Tournament 1989

I quote from a book of Susan Polgar: "Sofia's career highlight is certainly her astonishing performance at the 'Magistrale di Roma'...Nobody understood what happened in Rome, but Sofia just kept winning game after game. It did not matter who the opponents were. She won her first eight straight games, only showing 'mercy' in the last round against the Soviet grandmaster, Sergey Dolmatov (rated 2580). Her victims included four grandmasters: the Soviets Alexander Chernin (rated 2580), Semon Palatnik (2470) and Yuri Razuvaev (2550), as well as the many times Romanian Champion Mihai Suba (2515). Sofia's pre-Rome rating was 2295. She made an unbelievable performance rating of above 2900. It was clearly a Guinness World Record performance at that time in any open tournament. Here is a list of the ever performances in chess history (according to the calculations of Kevin O'Connell), published by GM Raymond Keene.

1.   Fischer       US Championship 1963       3000

2.   Karpov       Linares 1994                      2977

3.   Kasparov    Tilburg 1989                      2913

4.   Alekhine     San Remo 1930                  2906

5.   Sofia Polgar      Rome 1989                  2879

Here are all the games of the tournament: