The congress has now reached maximum capacity, with 160 entrants. This is very encouraging. There are still 9 days to go until the start, so we would clearly have received a lot more by then if we had enough room.

Almost all the pre-event organisation has been done. We are still short of volunteers from the club to help over the weekend. A separate email will go to club members about that.

Here are some stats about the event.

• There are 74 players in the Open, 58 in the Major (<2000) and 28 in the Minor (<1600).
• The average rating is 2039 in the Open, 1705 in the Major and 1420 in the Minor.
• 25 members of Guildford have entered.
• There are 55 juniors in the event (one-third of the total), including 35 in the Open. That's aged under 18 on 1 January 2024.
• There are 22 seniors in the event. That's aged 60+ on 1 January 2024.
• There are 9 female players in the event.
• The youngest player is aged 8 and the oldest is aged 95.
• The highest-rated player is last year's winner, IM Gediminas Sarakauskas, rated 2443.
• There are 4 IMs, 3 FIDE Masters, 1 Woman FIDE Master, and 4 Candidate Masters.
• 22 different FIDE Federations are represented.

So maybe we should call this the Guildford International Chess Congress…