Guinness attempt reaches 40,000 players

Guinness attempt reaches 40,000 players
By Rommel C. Manlosa
Saturday, January 7, 2012

WITH only weeks left before the Grand Finale, the Cebu City Sports Commission (CCSC) and the Cebu Chess Association (CCA) has gathered more than 40,000 participants from the classroom-wide and school-wide competitions that started last October.

By now, the Guinness World Record for the biggest chess tournament has been unofficially broken by the joint project of CCSC and CCA.

“Unofficially we have reached 40,000 participants in the classroom and school-wide tournaments. We are still consolidating, verifying and documenting reports that have reached us,” CCSC chairman Edward Hayco told Sun.Star Cebu via text message.

The grand finale is slated on Jan. 21 and 22 at the Cebu City Sports Center with an expected 3,000 finalists.

Of the 40,000 student-players involved in the school eliminations in more than 70 schools, mostly around Cebu City, that started October 2011, we expect around 3,000 players in the finals. The Cebu Guinness chess attempt is already part of the Sinulog celebration,” said CCA tournament organizer Roger Abella.

The current record listed by the Guinness World Record is held by Krasnoyarks City in Russia with only 1,214 participants.

“We will use the grandstand on the first day since 3,000 is a very huge number and all the players could not be accommodated at the CCSC gym,” added Abella.

CCSC and CCA are reminding the participants that the cut-off on all school-wide, club-wide and municipal-wide competitions is on Jan. 11 and all results and reports should be submitted to the CCSC office on or before Jan. 11.