The strongest masters open in the world, no English entries....

[Ian Thompson]

I just don't understand Ian Thompson's idea of playing 24 tournaments a day, which would give thinking time of 30 minutes per player for each game, provided he played 24 hours. Nor do I understand how he gets in 6 games where at least one player in the tournament is 1600+.

The Rating Regulations impose conditions on single tournaments. They don't, as far as I can see, place any restrictions on playing in multiple tournaments at the same time. Players routinely do this, for example, playing in morning tournaments and afternoon tournaments at the same congress. My first example of playing 3 games between midday and midnight and 3 games between midnight and midday is just an extreme example of this. My second example of 24 tournaments a day is where you enter multiple tournaments with overlapping playing schedules and play as many games as you can, hence my comment "if you managed to complete every game within an hour". (If you didn't, you would default your game in the next tournament you were scheduled to play in.) The principle is that you enter numerous tournaments, and, as soon as you've finished your game in one tournament, you start a game in another, circumventing the 12 hours a day limit. That means the number of games you could play in 1 month has no limit.

[Stewart Reuben]

Ian 'They don't, as far as I can see, place any restrictions on playing in multiple tournaments at the same time'.
Why should they? Article 11.3a of the Laws of Chess forbids this.
Perhaps you meant place any restrictions on playing in multiple tournaments on the same day, provided they are at different times. To satisfy this absurdity, Nick would have to get the rules changed to place any restrictions on playing in multiple tournaments on the same day, provided they are on different schedules.

So your insane player sits down at midnght on the 1st of the month. His clock is started and he has 2 hours to complete his moves. He plays instantly, apart from keeping score. At 1am the game is unfinished. After all, his opponent knows he has only to last until then to thwart our player's plans. So our player who has escaped being locked up forfeits his second game. No, that won't do unless the event has zero tolerance. If it doesn't his clock will be started and he will forfeit his first game. He must do so, otherwise he will be defaulted for playing two games simultaneously. He had to leave the playing area in order to do that. Again it is against the Laws.
And so it goes on. The last game starting at 2300 and the whole farago of nonsense starts again at midnight. Of course sadly it falls foul of 3.1 of the RR.

Having done all this and got his compliant IRO to send in the games for rating, FIDE will almost certainly invoke 0.5 of the Rating Regulations and reserve the right not to rate any of the games played by anybody in any of the tournaments.

A match works so much better for your game than a tournament. Both players agree. They start their first game at 09.00 hours (how civilised!). Both clocks show 2 hours thinking time. They each play one move and White resigns, both players having carefully recorded the moves. They sign the scoresheets. The second game starts immediately. Of course the clocks have been rest, or another clock used. This time it is Black who resigns on his second move. Play of course has to stop each day at 21.00. And so it goes for 31 days. That way you could manage 930 games without breaking into a sweat.
Now the person who had white in the first game loses a satisfyngly high number of rating points. He has fallen below 1000 and is off the list. Now he plays a real tournament and gets back on the list at a low level. Now the two players play again and it is the highest rated player in the universe who takes white in the first game. But his k factor is 10, so his rating goes down much more slowly than his low rated opponent, with k=40, goes up.
All this takes 3 months, but who cares?

[Ian Thompson]

Ian 'They don't, as far as I can see, place any restrictions on playing in multiple tournaments at the same time'.
Why should they? Article 11.3a of the Laws of Chess forbids this.

That's why I said in my previous post "if you managed to complete every game within an hour". (If you didn't, you would default your game in the next tournament you were scheduled to play in.)"

Perhaps you meant place any restrictions on playing in multiple tournaments on the same day, provided they are at different times.

No, I didn't mean to say that. I don't see anything prohibiting you entering multiple tournaments scheduled to take place at the same time. The prohibition is that you cannot be actually playing two games at the same time.

So your insane player sits down at midnght on the 1st of the month... and the whole farago of nonsense starts again at midnight.

The original question was what was the maximum number of FIDE rated games you could possibly play in a month. I believe that the correct answer is that there is no limit for the reasons I've already stated.

A match works so much better for your game than a tournament. Both players agree. They start their first game at 09.00 hours (how civilised!). Both clocks show 2 hours thinking time. They each play one move and White resigns, both players having carefully recorded the moves. They sign the scoresheets. The second game starts immediately. Of course the clocks have been rest, or another clock used. This time it is Black who resigns on his second move. Play of course has to stop each day at 21.00. And so it goes for 31 days. That way you could manage 930 games without breaking into a sweat.

That definitely would infringe Section 3.1 of the rating regulations. Once you'd been playing for just over 8 hours you'd have to stop because the next game would potentially take the total day's playing time to just over 12 hours.