Paul Wokes Blog

On Sunday morning at 8.05 am I was playing Roger Hooton for the first time. Helen arrived at around 8.30 am for the day's photoshoot because there were three different opponents that I would be playing during the day, as well as the Mayor of Boston who planned to arrive some time around 5.30 pm, after I had broken the record. In the three hours of play against Roger, I had four enjoyable and competitive games. At the end of our time, I came out slightly ahead on games won. Of course, as this was the first time for many years that I had seen some of these former pupils, I had to make sure I complied with the Guinness Company rules and restrict my conversations to a minimum. But chess is a game of concentration and everyone knew what the ultimate goal was, so complying was not too difficult.  Just after 11.00 am I started my first game against Andrew Watson. I was particularly keen to play well against Andrew because I knew that he had travelled all the way over from Skegness to play...

After finishing my games against Barry, I decided to have my second break before playing Kanak for the second time.  Feeling somewhat refreshed after this 28 minute break, I was ready to face the second and most difficult night of my challenge. My mind was telling me that once I had completed 48 hours of my challenge, I would almost be there!  Between 8.00 pm on Saturday and 2.00 am on Sunday I was playing Harley and Jordan Bryant.   When I was looking for opponents to play, I did not originally think of Harley and Jordan because I did not know that they played chess.  The twins are both excellent badminton players and before my stroke I partnered both of them, on different occasions, in badminton matches against rival teams in the Boston League. If my memory serves me correctly, we won most of the games we played in!  As chess players, I had no idea of their ability, but I was taking nothing for granted. After three hours of play against Harley I won ...

            When I finished playing Richard at 11.00 pm I had been playing for over 15 hours and was getting in to a steady rhythm. During this entire period I had not used any of my allotted rest time. I planned to have my first 'sleep' during the nine hours that I would be playing the brothers, Kanak and Karan Gupta.      Karan is training to be a doctor and, a few days before I started this record event, he gave me a quick physical check-up. I spoke to him about my ability to leave and enter my body under control and he witnessed one such event and recorded his findings. So I was keen to find out if I would be refreshed by this method and not, therefore, need hours of sleep to carry on.           At 3/14/11 am when I had just finished my second game against Karan I decided to have my first official sleep period. As I had now been playing for just over 19 hours, I was entitled to over one hour of rest (5 m...

  I must thank Chris and Ashley because between them they covered the three hours that Loki was due to play me.  Without their help my record attempt would have been stopped in its tracks.  Trying to organize my opponents, as well as concentrating on the difficult task of playing chess against powerful opponents, was difficult enough in itself without any major calamities like opponents not turning up! Between them, Chris and Ashley played me for 9 hours.  This took me through till 8.00 pm on Friday evening.  Twelve hours of playing non-stop.  So time for a quick assessment of how everything was proceeding.  Before this record attempt, I did practise over Xmas and Boxing Day.  Without too many problems, I managed to stay awake for over 50 hours; so 12 hours was a mere a mere drop in the ocean in the grand scale of what I was attempting!   I had a short toilet break at this point in time, but no rest before I played my next opponent, Rich...

   In the three hours of play against Allan, we were very evenly matched and all of the games were closely contested.  At the end of each game we agreed a draw and in my opinion this was a fair result.  The three hours seemed to pass amazingly quickly.  For every hour I played, I was entitled to a 5 minute break, but I chose not to use any of this time preferring to accumulate everything until later on, when I became more tired!     My next opponent was Chris Dorrington and we started our first game at 11.00  am. The games against Chris did not last as long as those against Allan and we seemed to be rattling through the games at great speed.  At around 1.00 pm two visitors knocked on the door and Chris went and let them in.  Paul, the leader of the Boston Borough Council and a lady representative from Matt Warman's office introduced themselves and wished me luck. The lady told me that Matt would not be able to visit me himself. Of c...

                                                                My world chess marathon record On Thursday 1st September 2022 at 7.30 pm John Pareezer, Helen Tiutiunnyk and I met at the White Hart Hotel in Boston, Lincolnshire, England to set up the video cameras for filming my record attempt.  The current, marathon chess record is held by two Norwegian chess players called  Hallvard Haug Flatebø and Sjur Ferkingstad  players and stands at 56 hr 09 min 37 sec.  My plan was to play for at least 57 hours to beat their record.  Once we had set up and tested the cameras I returned to my flat to try and get as much sleep as possible before starting my event the following day.  I must confess that I did not sleep that well as my mind was going over all my preparations to make sure everthing was covered....