Local armchair tycoons join worldwide bid to set Guinness record in Monopoly

Thousands of Monopoly lovers across the world were expected to set a Guinness World Record last night by playing the game together.

They included about 50 Hong Kong fans, who rolled their dice to start yesterday at 10pm local time, as players converged in more than 20 other cities.

The Hongkongers gathered at The Peak, whose iconic tram represents Hong Kong in the game's latest edition, called Monopoly Here and Now: The World Edition. Players ranged from secondary school students to adults in their 30s.

'It's like the world is getting smaller,' Butt Wah-liu, a writer and the 1996 world Monopoly champion, said of the record attempt.

Organisers would not give a better estimate of how many people would play, or in which cities, until the game had finished, but the BBC reported that people in London, Tokyo and Atlantic City would also participate.

There has been no previous record for the most people playing, although records exist for the largest game board and the longest games in a tree-house, a bath and on a balancing beam.

'We have a group of five friends coming, but if friends bring their friends, there could be more,' said Peter Chan Wing-lok, 16, a student at Cheung Chuk Shan College.