David Howell’s new status as England No 1 will be tested this weekend when the annual British championship, first played in 1904, starts in Torquay. Howell faces a stiff challenge from Michael Adams, who was the acknowledged king until his form dipped earlier this year.
Top-seeded three-time champion Howell, 28, and six-time champion Adams, 47, are rated 130 points or more ahead of the No 3 seed, Nick Pert, so it will be a major shock if another of the 54 entrants wins the £5,000 first prize. Games will be live and free to watch online, starting at 2.30pm on Saturday.
So tight is the race among England’s best five grandmasters, who also include Gawain Jones, Matthew Sadler and Luke McShane, that this quintet, all ranked in the global top 60, are covered by just 15 rating points. If Howell and Adams both disappoint at Torquay, Jones and Sadler could become joint England No 1 without pushing a pawn.
Apart from Howell v Adams, the interest at Torquay will be on whether a new name can break through to the top echelon of UK chess. There is a clear strength gap, and also a significant age gap.
In the 20 years since Howell and Jones debuted as pre-teen talents, not a single new player has been able to break the 2600 rating barrier, let alone the 2630 level of Nigel Short or the 2670+ of the elite quintet.
A pattern has emerged where the best English talents progress steadily through the 2200s and 2300s while at secondary school, acquire the IM title (three 2450+ performances plus a 2400 overall rating) in their gap year or at university, attempt the higher GM title (three 2600 performances plus an overall 2500 rating) after graduating, and then downsize their chess careers for a mainstream profession.
In contrast India, which is probably the No 1 nation in junior chess, has its best talents coached by the legendary RB Ramesh, ready to play international opens at 10 or 11 and scoring IM norms at 12.
The main candidates at Torquay trying to break this cycle will England’s youngest GM, Dan Fernandez, 24, who learned his skills in Singapore, the Cambridge student IM Matthew Wadsworth, 19, and IM Ravi Haria, 20, who both already have one GM norm. They can all do well, but achieving 2600 is a different ball game.
Shak Mamedyarov won the Riga leg of the Fide Grand Prix this week after the Azeri played a thrilling final with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave which lasted through two classical and six rapid/blitz games before the Frenchman lost an Armageddon shoot-out.
After two of the four Grand Prix tournaments, with Hamburg in November and Tel Aviv in December still to come, the field has narrowed down in the race for the big prize, two spots in the eight-player candidates which will decide Magnus Carlsen’s 2020 world title challenger. Mamedyarov and Russia’s Alex Grischuk both have 10 Grand Prix points from two GP events, Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi nine from one, and Vachier-Lagrave eight from one.
Nepomniachtchi and Vachier-Lagrave are the favourites, but that would change quickly if either of them fails at Hamburg or Tel Aviv, where a defeated semi-finalist may only earn three GP points.
Vachier-Lagrave is ranked world No 5 but narrowly missed out as a candidate in 2018 and told an interviewer in March that: “ It’s very important for me to qualify for the next Candidates. If I don’t, I’ll be 32 by the time the 2022 Candidates comes around … The clock is ticking”.
Grand Prix rules award a bonus point to a player who wins in the best of two classical games rather than in speed tiebreaks. Vachier-Lagrave won all his first three matches without needing overtime, kicking off with a 19-move miniature against the Czech No 1.
White’s 9 Qf4!? was a crafty novelty in the solid Two Knights line of thee Caro-Kann. It enticed the dubious reply 9…e5?! (better either Bxc3 or dxe4) which self-trapped the d4 bishop with fatal consequences. The final was a different matter, as Mamedyarov won the first classical game and was pressing through most of the match.
Vachier-Lagrave’s opening repertoire is almost always the Sicilian Najdorf against 1 e4 and the Grünfeld against 1 d4. Such a principled approach used to be normal, but has been abandoned by most top GMs who fear prepared opening shocks, which happened in Riga with Mamedyarov’s 7 Qa4+ and 12 Bf4. The sequel, where Grünfeld’s a5 knight was stranded and out of the game, was akin to what occurred in a different Grünfeld variation in Carlsen’s final round win against Vachier-Lagrave in Stavanger.
Right at the end, though, Vachier-Lagrave was unlucky in that he played White in the Armageddon game. The Fide Grand Prix still uses the old version where White has five minutes and Black four, which gives Black a significant advantage as the small time difference does not offset White’s need to win. Stavanger does it better, with 10 minutes against seven, and this produced a near-even contest with 15 white wins and 19 where Black won or scored with a draw.
3629 The white king is on c3. The only legal way to reach the position is to add white king at b3, white pawn at c2 , and black pawn at b4. Here the white king is in check, and play goes 1 c4 bxc3 en passant double check 2 Kxc3 and we have the diagram at the top of the page.
