Dimitrije Bjelica

Who is Dimitrije Bjelica?

Dimitrije Bjelica is a Serbian chess FIDE Master who can be found in the Guinness Book of Records for playing a 312-board simul in Subotica in 1997. Bjelica is also one of the most prolific chess authors in the world, with over 80 books in 180 editions and 55 videos and CDs to his name. He has organised many big events and was the arbiter at tournaments like Linares. Chess historian Edward Winter contends that Bjelica's books are rife with misspellings and sometimes contain plagiarized material.

Bjelica also claims to have played a record-breaking 56 games of blindfold chess in a May 25, 1997 simultaneous exhibition at Igalo, near Herceg Novi. However, Eliot Hearst and John Knott write:

The Exhibition was played at the International Congress of Nurses and his opponents were all woman nurses. The game he lost was to his mother, at that time more than 80 years old. ... Bjelica reports that the exhibition lasted seven hours and that in several games his version of chess, Chess for Peace, was used, in which the bishops standing initially on f1 and f8 were replaced by pawns. He told us that none of his opponents had chess ratings but "some of them were very good." ... Tellingly and surprisingly, he admitted that he was permitted to write down whatever he liked during the exhibition ... .