A message from Mike Gunn of Guildford Chess Club.
Guildford Chess Club is 125 years old this year and is organising an open air simultaneous against 9 chess champions/ masters who have played for Guildford Chess Club. The event is completely free to enter and will be held in the open air (unless it rains) in Guildford High Street on Saturday September 11th.
I am writing as a member of the organising committee of this event and I’m pleased to report that we are making excellent progress with the plans. We intend to set up 125 boards in the High Street and have 3 sessions of play which will start at 10.30am, 12.30pm and 2.30pm. This means at least 375 opportunities to play against a master or champion player (listed below). So far about half of these playing slots have been signed up, but most are pupils from local schools and while we are delighted to see this participation, it will probably not provide very stiff opposition against the list of master players and champions!
This means that there is plenty of room left to sign up at: https://guildfordchess125.eventbrite.co.uk
If you don’t feel like playing we still need to recruit a small number of stewards to help on the day – if you are willing to do this, please reply to this email.
This is the list of master/champion players we have recruited to play all-comers:
- Grandmaster Gawain Jones (former British Champion and current European Online Blitz Champion)
- Grandmaster Nick Pert (former World Under 18 Champion)
- Matthew Wadsworth (former British U18 and U21 Champion)
- Akshaya Kalaiyalahan (former British Women’s Champion)
- Andrew Martin (former Guinness World-record holder for playing the most games simultaneously)
- Nigel Povah (former British Senior Over 50s Champion)
- Harry Grieve (British Rapidplay Online Champion)
- Alex Golding (the highest rated 17-year old in England}
- Jessica Mellor (former European School Girls Under 11 Champion)
We hope to see you on September 11th!
Mike Gunn