Why do some players play sooo many daily games simultaneously?

Hey all. I have noticed that in the daily game format there are many players playing huge amounts of games at once. I mean we are talking 70 or more games at once as an example. First off....why? What is the attraction? How is it possible to concentrate on so many games? How do they even manage to keep track of all those games, positions, playing styles, tactical ideas etc across all these games? I am fascinated tand intrigued to understand the reasoning. Plus many have beginner to intermediate range elos. I barely can keep track of 5 games or so at a time.. lol. I would love to hear opinions on this. Maybe some of these "power" daily players can explain the motivation and advantages they get from this style of playing. 

I play a lot to become familiar with the different patterns from different opening systems. I do enjoy chess.com, but treat it as sparring rather than real chess - which is played over the board. So when people are banned for ch**ting I consider them rather pathetic specimens.

I think some folks do it because their networks suck and bullet or even blitz is impossible because of disconnects.  When you get over 1,000 games going at once though, there might be some psychological issues.  And yes I'm not making that up; there have been players with 12, 15, even 1800 games.  And there was the guy from the Phillipines a few years ago with over 3,000 games although he tended to time out big time.  I played a game with someone with 250 games going at once and he seemed to make good, if hurried, moves.  I had like 3 or 4 going so had time to really analyze and managed to beat him, but just barely...LOL.

@baddogno 1800 games!?!?!?! Flip. That's insane. Even 250 blows my mind. 10 I can understand as I often see tournaments with 10 simuls as the requirement. 

@Ziggy_Zugzwang that's really interesting that you play many games to "practise" many different openings. I had not thought of that. A clever idea.

@9497010838 I take my hat off to you for playing 60 at once and clearly keeping a handle on things! 

Me....I will work my way up to the 5 to 10 mark so I am prepared and comfortable for tournaments.  

It's the daily version of blitz.  Say you want to play blitz but have a bad internet connection or can't take 5-10 minutes straight from work to play a game.  By playing 100 games at once you can go to chess.com when you have a minute, move in your games, and go back to work.  

These people tend to hold up tourneys though.  I joined a 14 day/move tourney about 2 years ago and it's still the first round because one of the players has 1000+ games and only moves right at the TC.  I quit the tourney, as did others, but it could take years.  The format is two games in a knockout format, but the games don't start simultaneously and in fact the stalling player still has a unstarted game in Round 1.

I play around 20 at a time, and have no problem keeping up but that is just me I just like to play!

Almost every month Chess.com hosts a Tournament.  There are 5 players and 10 games.  If you try to play in every one, your previous games most definitely are still going!  I've done up to 30 games at once.  There is not as much study per move.  It is more, "Let's get these notifications out of the way."

One possibility is that the players love doing puzzles that are tired directly to rated games. Personally, I'm just now exploring playing some Sicilian Defenses against 1 e4. I LOVE the Caro-Kann, but want more variety. I'm also looking at the Nimzo-Indian and similar defenses against 1 d4, even though I prefer the Slav overall.  Consequently, I may play more games than normal, just to explore those openings more thoroughly.  But in my case that may mean 17 instead of the normal 6!

But it still amazes me when I have daily opponents simultaneously playing 200+ games!  For me, I'd like to be playing 6 games simultaneously but opening exploration plus team needs have had me playing up to 17 - when my rating starts to fall because I don't have enough time.

@kinglybingly and @MickinMD thanks for this insight. I had not factored in the tournament angle. I know that if I attempted anything past 10 games my ratings would start to go down. I am busy slowly building up my rating. When I joined the site I knew nothing about Glinko rating deviations so when I lost a few games I was horrified to see huge chunks of my elo   disappearing. So I switched to mixing my games with more unrated challenges to get back in to the swing of things and to gain experience without destroying my elo further. In  the final analysis one still needs the time to make all these moves and if one thinks of a player with 250 games on their "plate" and he/she takes on average say 2 minutes to figure out his/her move...that's still 8 hours to cover all the games. That is a LOT of time required. Certainly a GM, FM, or any other master could fly through the games (essentially a simul) but I am seeing people with far lower elos doing this. I wonder if it affects their ratings negatively. Maybe it's the personal challenge to see how many games one can handle. Almost like a daily games puzzle rush!! Another trick I have seen used against me is to use vacation mode to "stall" things?? I remember playing move 1 against a player with many simul games and he put himself into vacation mode immediately! I was quite taken aback. Here I had just started a game and vacation mode was suddenly in effect. 

@pjr2468 ouch. That must result in a bit of a surprise!

Honestly, I’m not sure. For a little while I decided to join a bajillion daily tournaments and voilà, I ended up with like 150 games. I’m lucky I never timed out. I calmed down a bit and simply joined tournaments I made myself. I’m playing the games I already have going. I now have 25 games. It was certainly hard to keep up with 150 games, especially because I also have ADHD. 😂

That's a lot of games!!! I play a max of 4 at a time and that feels overwhelming at times... 😲

Flashlight002, I agree with everything you said.  My current opponent has about 200 games at this time.  I have found that such opponents are easier to beat as they cannot dedicate as much time on a game that I can.  Personally, I enjoy each game more as it develops a personality all it's own.

I accidentally ended up with 19 at once because I joined one club tournament and then joined another one on accident and I forgot to withdraw before it started.

hi people Alan this game not good for you so not and goodbye 

because I mindlessly join tournaments 

and accept challenges from any random that wants to play

Yeah, 25 isn't too bad for me, somehow, but 150, was something else.

You all to young it seems, to know of the true Legends of playing simultaneous Daily chess games. Talking serious numbers here. Like 1000 ongoing games and records of 600/0/1. Games played for 1/2 year. There were several such talented players- they seem to have disappeared. Quite a few about who play 100’s but with 14 day time. Insane stuff. Some lunatics out there!