GWR DAY - MEXICO
Check It Out, Mate
If there’s one thing Mexico isn’t short of it’s chess players. They have so many, in fact, that thousands had to be turned away from El Zocalo, the magnificent main square in Mexico City, when an attempt was made on Sunday 22 October 2006 to establish a new Guinness World Record for the largest number of simultaneously played games of chess.
In the end, a total of 13,446 players worked together to break the record, beating the previous effort, which had been made in Pachuca, Mexico, in June 2005, by nearly 1,700.
The very first move was made on a giant chessboard by Alejandro Encinas, the mayor of Mexico City, triggering a frenzy of play across the square which saw 602 masters take on up to 24 opponents at a time.