England’s grandmasters are in action on Saturday, as round one of the British Championship gets under way at St George’s Hall in the centre of Liverpool. Former Russian Nikita Vitiugov, 38, the national No 1, is top seeded while the No 3 and world senior champion, Michael Adams, is the man in form after the 53-year-old from Taunton, Somerset, won the English title in July.
The continuing chess boom, reflecting the easy availability of online blitz games, the popularity of the world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, and the success of Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, have combined to spark a record entry of over 1,600 players for the championship and its subsidiary tournaments.
Vitiugov, who switched federations in response to the invasion of Ukraine, and Adams, who defies the years and was impressive when winning the English title at Kenilworth, can expect several challenges to appear during the nine-round tournament, which finishes on Sunday week.
Gawain Jones, 37, is the defending champion and No 3 seed. Matthew Wadsworth, 25, and England’s youngest ever grandmaster Shreyas Royal, 16, are ambitious for new achievements while Dan Fernandez, 27, is fresh from an impressive first place in the Ghent Open.
Bodhana Sivanandan, the 10-year-old Harrow primary schoolgirl who is already in the record books, scored another landmark result last Sunday when she achieved a Fide women’s grandmaster performance with 4.5/9 at the Aix-en-Provence tournament in France.
In doing so, Sivanandan broke a historic age record set by Judit Polgar, the all-time women’s No 1, in London 1988 at age 12, and then broken by Hou Yifan, China’s all-time women’s No 2, as an 11-year-old at the Beijing Fide zonal in 2005.
Sivanandan met a strong field, including a grandmaster and five international masters. Her fast, confident, accurate and impressive defence in a tricky pawn down rook endgame against 2488-rated GM Ortik Nigmatov of Uzbekistan was captured on video by ChessBase India.
Her overall performance rating for the event was 2401, providing her first woman grandmaster norm and her second of three required norms for woman international master. Her overall Fide rating leapt from 2087 to 2216, her highest yet.
The age record for a national championship was set in July 2024 by a 10-year-old, Abdalrahman Sameh Mohamed, who totalled 10.5/11 with a rating performance of 2466 in the Egyptian championship in Cairo. For the UK, the record holder is Akshaya Kalaiyalahan, who won the first of her two British women’s titles in 2013, aged 11.
Sivanandan’s latest result suggests that she has made a big quantum jump, as many talented juniors do. She currently has momentum on her side. In such circumstances, extraordinary results become possible.
The women’s championship at Liverpool is incorporated within the open event, and on the face of it, winning the title this year could be a bridge too far for Sivanandan. In round one of the British Championship on Saturday she has been paired with Jones. Her fellow prodigy Supratit Banerjee, 11, will play Vitiugov.
The three clear favourites are the former world girls champion Harriet Hunt, the English woman champion, Elmira Mirzoeva, and the defending co-champion Lan Yao, who is fresh from a major success at the Andorra Open, where she achieved her third and final norm for the IM title, although she still needs a 2400 rating for that against her current high of Fide 2382.
This was Yao’s winning final round game, which clinched her final norm. She was unbeaten in the Andorra Open against six IMs and a GM.
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Last Sunday, the same day that Sivanandan and Yao reached their norms, Jonathan Pein, 27, son of the ECF International Director and CHESS magazine editor, Malcolm Pein, made his first IM norm in Oviedo, Spain, sharing third prize with seven wins, two losses, and no draws.
Chess made its first appearance this week at the Esports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with a huge $1.5m prize fund. The quarter-finals and semi-finals were both played on Thursday.
One game provided an early disaster, as Nodirbek Abdusattorov v Jan-Krzysztof Duda lasted only five moves due to a mouse slip: 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Nc3 Nf6 4 Bc4 Nxe4 5 Nxe4 d6?? and Black resigned. Of course 5…d5 was intended, when the game is level.
In the quarter-finals Alireza Firouzja (France) beat Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan) 3-1, Arjun Erigaisi (India) beat Ian Nepomniachtchi (Russia) 2.5-1.5, Carlsen (Norway) beat Nihal Sarin (India) 2.5-0.5, and Hikaru Nakamura (US) beat Levon Aronian (US) 2.5-1.5.
In the semi-finals Firouzja beat Erigaisi 4-1 and Carlsen beat Nakamura 4-3. In the final on Friday Carlsen defeated Firouzja in the best of three sets by 2-0 (3-1, 3-1). In the third place match, Nakamura defeated Erigaisi 3.5-2.5.
3983 1 g4+! fxg4 (if Kh4 2 Bg3 mate) 2 Rd5+! Ne5 3 Rxe5+ Qxe5 4 Qxh6 mate.
