Mass chess festival to break world record
Mass chess festival to break world record
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Around 12,000 people are expected to participate in a gigantic
chess tournament in a bid to break the world record for 'the most
people playing chess simultaneously', organizers of the event
announced here on Tuesday.
Called the Mega Chess 12000, it will be held at the Kemayoran
fair ground in Central Jakarta on Friday with the winner to be
awarded a Daihatsu Xenia car.
"We're hoping for 12,032 players exactly for the tournament.
We want it to be recorded in the Guinness Book of Records," Santi
Diansari, the chairwoman of the organizing committee, said during
a press conference.
"It's not an easy task to net that number. But we have been
working with more than 100 coordinators assigned in the Greater
Jakarta area to enlist the participants," she said, adding that
they had registered 10,000 so far.
Santi said they were hoping to break the current world record
set up in Havana, Cuba, with a turnout of 11,320 people on Dec.
7, 2002.
The one-day tournament, which is scheduled to run from 8 a.m
to 6 p.m Jakarta time, will be conducted in fourteen rounds in a
single elimination tournament.
The first seven rounds will be played with the participants
each allowed to complete the match in 15 minutes, while the
remaining rounds will be just 5 minutes.
If there are the expected number of people, there will be
12,031 overall matches, compared to 5,660 in Havana, where the
players each just played one match.
To ensure that the expected number is met, each of the
participants will be identified with a barcode which will
automatically record their names on a monitor.
Besides videotaping the event, officials from the Jakarta
Chess Association and the Jakarta Sports Office will be invited
to the event, according to the organizers, as an independent
observer to ensure the validity of the event.
Apart from the great display of the top non-master and amateur
players, a highly rated smaller tourney will also be held for
master's players.
The interesting feature in the master's competition is that
the final will utilize gigantic pieces measuring up to 1.6
meters.