Chess at Marianopolis: Simul with IM Jean Hebert

On Tuesday, November 11, 2014, the Marianopolis Chess Club had the privilege of inviting IM Jean Hébert to play simul with students at Marianopolis College during Activity Period.

IM Hébert is the highest rated player that the College has ever invited to play at the College. He has devoted himself to chess for the past 40 years either as a player, a mentor or a writer. Highlights of his long career include Canadian Champion of 1978 and 2010 (tied for first in 2007) as well as many showings in the Chess Olympiads. Obviously, there were personal reasons for selecting him over many other good candidates in Montreal: having seen him at many tournaments and having seen him play, I thought it would be nice for me to talk to him and play him.

Sign-ups were mainly done on a first-come-first-serve basis, as this would be more fair to students who really wanted to play. Shortly after the College-wide dismissal of 12:30 PM, the 15 spots filled up the and games began. 

Playing White in all the games, IM Hébert started doing his turns around the circle at 12:45 PM. He claimed his first win at around 1:20 PM. Luckily for the unlucky player, she and Hébert had time to play a second game, which the International Master also won. After his initial triumph, the victories slowly poured in. His peak came at around 2:00 PM as most of the opponents resigned because they had a class to attend (though they all had unfavourable positions). By 2:15, there were only three people left! Now, things started to get fast as our turn came up quickly.

Interestingly, at the end, I was the last man standing between the IM and a perfect record (he went 15W 0L vs the 14 others). How did I do?

So at the end of the day, he maintained an unbeaten streak. Meanwhile, as President, I did manage to prove my chess prowess

Thanks for reading! As usual, comments and feedback are appreciated :)

Hou Ji Yao

President of the Marianopolis Chess Club