Cebu Chess Festival set Jan. 21

THE CEBU Chess Festival, which aims to break the Guinness record for the  world’s largest chess tournament, will highlight the Sinulog festival on Jan. 21 at the Cebu City Sports Center.

The record-breaking attempt will almost be official as organizers have managed to come up with 4,000 players to compete in the grand finals.

The tournament was formally launched October 2011 in all public and private schools in Cebu City. It gathered around 50,000 participants during the school-wide eliminations.

Krasnoyarsk, Russia, currently holds the Guinness record with 1,214 participants.

“We first targeted only 1,500 participants. We didn’t realize the number would balloon up to more than 50,000 after we launched an aggressive grassroots program that took three months of extensive chess workshops in over 150 public schools,” said Cebu City Sports Commission chairman Edward Hayco.

The Cebu Chess Festival will also include an open division for rated and non-rated wood pushers.

The deadline of registration will be on Jan. 19. A participant may represent a club, university, college, city or municipality. He could also represent a public or private entity./CORRESPONDENT DALE G. ROSAL