Who Loves Chess the Most?

It’s got to be the guy who plays the most games, right?

I think that there’s no question that the most active player in top-level international chess is Viktor Korchnoi. According to the following highly unofficial statistics that I found on this web page, the players with the most games in ChessBase (a pretty good proxy for top-level international chess) as of 2008 were:

1. Viktor Korchnoi — 4827 games
2. Ivan Farago — 3827 games
3. Anatoly Karpov — 3723 games

Does anyone know of a more up-to-date, as well as more official, list of the most active international players?

Anyway, the name that impresses me most on this list is not #1 or #3 but #2, a Hungarian player whom I have vaguely heard of but who definitely does not have the cachet of the super-K’s. I’m sure that Korchnoi and Karpov can play in any tournament they feel like. Probably not so for Farago. For him to make this list shows real dedication.

It’s a little bit harder to make a similar list for U.S. players. The USCF publishes a yearbook issue of Chess Life that used to, and perhaps still does, contain a list of the people who played the most games in the past year. However, I don’t remember seeing any such compilation on a career basis.

However, there is one name I definitely remember seeing in the annual lists: Jay Bonin. And one look at his member statistics leaves very little doubt that he ranks at the top for most games in a career. The USCF’s computerized records go back only to 1991, but here is Bonin’s file:

Record By Year (since 1991)

As I recall, typically the most active chess player in the U.S. plays about 500 games in a year. Here is a guy who has averaged 500 games EVERY year for 20 years! Keep in mind, that is nearly a game and a half per day.

I have no idea who is number two on the list, but I couldn’t even find anyone else who has played 6000 games, let alone 10 thousand.

However, the question wasn’t who PLAYS the most, but who LOVES CHESS the most. I would like to put in a plug for this guy:

Record By Year (since 1991)

I know you’ve never heard of him. His name is Ken Cohen, and he lives in New York. What I want you to notice is his conspicuous lack of success. He has played almost half as many games as Bonin, but he has never gotten out of class C. He has never won even half his games in any calendar year. In fact, he has only twice topped 40 percent. And he has lost almost twice as many games as Bonin has.

It’s easy to play chess when you’re winning. But to keep on playing even when you’re losing, game after game, … That, my friends, is love.

So you can have your Bonin with his eye-popping stats, his amazing consistency (he’s never scored less than 70 percent in a year), and his 422 wins in 2003, which may be an all-time record for one year. I think the guy who loves chess the most is the one who loses the most, and my champion is Ken Cohen. Who else can say he has lost 2800 times in his career? Has anyone else ever lost 300 games in a calendar year?