Guinness Chess Records

 But if you want your name to be etched in history, or at least appear on a special list for a few years before someone even weirder surpasses you, then Guinness records are the way to go.

And what if you want all of those records in chess? That's what we're talking about today.

Guinness tracks various records, but this article focuses on those that anyone with enough time, interest, and an unusual talent (and maybe some money) can break. Usually, these records are directly monitored by Guinness, but not always. Records like “Youngest Grandmaster” – which Guinness does have – currently held by GM Abhimanyu Mishra, belong in another article.

Longest Chess Marathon

We start here due to an upcoming attempt to break this record. As of now, the record stands at 56 hours, during which two people continuously played chess against each other. I don't think I've ever stayed awake for 56 hours straight, let alone played chess that long.

Two Norwegians managed it, and if the next attempt succeeds, the record will still remain in the hands of two Norwegians, including Askild Bryn from Chess.com.

Longest Time as World No. 1 in Women’s Chess

This is probably the only “normal” chess record that Guinness acknowledges and allows applications for—but it’s also an impossible record for any random Guinness aspirant.

GM Judit Polgár is almost unanimously—if not entirely unanimously—considered the best female chess player of all time, and the fact that she was the world’s number one for over a quarter-century is one of the main reasons why.

Longest Correspondence Game

I think anyone can claim they’ve set a record without anyone watching, but this one seems particularly hard to verify. Guinness did, though: two chess players continuously played a correspondence game for 53 years.

Speed Records

Speed is a key element of blitz and bullet chess, but when someone sets a Guinness chess speed record, it almost always involves setting up the chessboard.

Fastest Time to Set Up a Chessboard (pieces)

You might think that this record belongs to Chess.com servers, with times around 0.001 seconds, but no—it has to be a physical chessboard. (Shame.) This record belongs to S. Odelia Jasmine, who did it in 29.85 seconds in July 2021. If that sounds a bit long to you, first remember that the record must be done with one hand, and also that you need to place 32 pieces on the squares, which means less than a second per piece. Good luck. (Will you beat this record?)

Fastest Time to Set Up a Large Chess Set

It’s unclear how much larger this large chess set was than a standard one, but Nurzat Nurlanovich Turdaliev needed 46.62 seconds to place all 32 pieces in their correct spots. Did he have to reach farther than usual, or did this involve some foot movement? That’s a question for Nurzat and Guinness, and for us to never find out.

Fastest Time to Set Up a Chessboard Blindfolded

Interestingly, enlarging the chess set has roughly the same effect as blindfolding a regular set: the time for this record is almost identical to the previous one. Punithamalar Rajashekar completed this task in May 2023 in 45.72 seconds, which of course requires recognizing each piece by touch rather than sight... it wouldn’t be a chessboard setup record if you could just place random pieces on random squares.

Fastest Time to Set Up a Chess Set (Pair)

How much time can you save when two people set up the chess set? Apparently less than zero, as this record is 30.80 seconds, almost a whole second longer than the record for a single person.

According to a photo on the Guinness website, it seems they took turns—one person set up the white pieces, the other the black—which explains the lack of any efficiency gain. But it also makes you wonder why this record is even possible under the current rules.

Fastest Time to Set Up a Chessboard with Mouth

By far our favorite of this type. Guinness record veteran Lim Kai Yi from Malaysia took 97.25 seconds, or just over three seconds per piece, to—yes, you’re reading this correctly—set up a chessboard using his mouth instead of his hands to lift and place the pieces. It’s a shame that no publicly available footage of this record exists.

Participation Records

Largest Tournament

The tournament had 43,157 players, giving it a larger “population” than eight independent countries (Marshall Islands, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Palau, Nauru, Tuvalu, and Vatican City).

Most Simultaneous Chess Games by One Person

Contemporary reports of this record, held by GM Ehsan Ghaem-Maghami, mention that the number of opponents was 604. However, officially, it's only 135, as the Guinness site states that "Maghami also played against an additional 469 opponents who did not meet the qualifying criteria of having a published Elo of at least 1,200." Fortunately, 135 plus 469 equals 604, or I’d be quite confused.

Most Simultaneous Chess Games in One Place

This record wasn’t set by one person! The record stands at 20,480 games, and because that was the number of games, the number of players was 10,240.

Largest Chess Lesson

The record doesn’t state whether the 1,459 students in this lesson were in one place. Since chess clubs from Muttenz set this record in 2018, it’s possible they used Zoom or Skype.

Size-Related Records

Largest Chess Set Collection

Don’t worry; the largest chess set collection means the most sets in one collection, not the largest group of sets by size. This record belongs to Mongolian Tumen-Ulzii Zandraa, with 438 sets.

Smallest Chess Computer Program

It’s 354 bytes. Not kilobytes. How can 354 units of information be enough to simulate the nearly countless number of chess positions? Well, I’m not a programmer, so don’t ask me, but Guinness didn’t ask record holder Alejandro Garcia either.

Largest Chess Set

A chessboard measuring 5.9 meters x 5.9 meters already takes up a sizable room, and the king of this set stands about one and a quarter meters tall.

Smallest Machine-Made Chess Set

The smallest machine-made set was created by students at Texas Tech University with a chessboard measuring 435μm x 435μm.

Smallest Handcrafted Chess Set

Ara Davidi Ghazaryan crafted a chessboard measuring eight millimeters by eight millimeters, with a king standing 2.4 millimeters tall.

Highest Altitude Chess Game

Where did it take place? Well, on Mount Everest, of course. But not at the summit—that would be insane. They played at around 6,000 meters/19,000 feet above sea level.

Conclusion

Which record is your favorite and why is it the “Fastest Time to Set Up a Chessboard with Mouth”? If you could set your own chess record, what would it be? Let us know in the comments!

PK