England’s open and women’s teams looked unlikely to contend for medals on Thursday, as this week’s European championships at Batumi, Georgia, passed the halfway mark.
Leaders after five of the nine rounds: Open: 1 Ukraine 9 match points (12.5 game points), 2 Netherlands 8 (12.5), 3 Serbia 8 (11). Also: 12 England 6 (11). Women: 1 Poland 10 (13.5), 2 Georgia 8 (14), 3 Germany 8 (12). Also: 10 England 6 (11,5).
England’s Open strategy appeared to be for the experienced top boards, the former Russian champion Nikita Vitiugov and the nine-time British champion Michael Adams, to play solidly in a holding operation against the heavy hitters of the top teams, for Gawain Maroroa Jones and Luke McShane to play positively on three and four, and for Shreyas Royal, 16, to gain experience on the reserve board.
Vitiugov has shown his class, and in Thursday’s fifth round he exploited his French opponent’s errors to win a pawn, then a piece, before finally trapping Black’s knight in the corner. Adams had his first defeat on Thursday after three draws while Jones has been the best performing England player, with two wins and two draws.
McShane, who lost in round two, recovered in round three when his Lithuanian opponent blundered. In round four McShane found his touch in a version of the Two Knights’ Defence which is popular in amateur chess, skilfully exploiting a small edge in an endgame of rook and two knights each, but he lost again in round five after mishandling a superior position in time pressure, a recurrent weakness which still haunts him.
Royal, England’s youngest ever grandmaster, has held his own and won well against Lithuania in an endgame of rooks and opposite coloured bishops.
Jovanka Houska, the well-known online commentator, has been solid on top board for England women, although she is yet to win a game. The star so far has been Elmira Mirzoeva, 43, the former Moscow women’s blitz champion, whose 4/5 score included this incisive 24-move miniature where she destroyed her Czech opponent’s king defences.
Bodhana Sivanandan, aged 10 and England’s youngest ever international player, has held her own with 1.5/3, and it could have been better still. After a 104-move marathon in round three which she lost narrowly, she reached a winning endgame next day but allowed a draw by threefold repetition.
The European championships continue daily at noon BST on Friday (Saturday is a rest day) and all the England games can be followed with computer assessments and commentary on lichess.
Last weekend provided a double highlight for US chess. Last Friday, the US champion and world No 3, Fabiano Caruana, earned the $150,000 first prize at the St Louis-organised Grand Chess Tour in São Paulo, Brazil, defeating France’s Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the final.
Despite the huge prize fund, the GCT finals had their downside. All eight games in the semi-finals and final were halved, some in perfunctory fashion, as the GMs implicitly refused to risk their classical rating points and preferred to decide the event in rapid and blitz. The victor of the prestigious Sinquefield Cup, Wesley So, did not qualify for São Paulo.
After winning in Brazil, Caruana flew to Arlington, Texas, for a USA v India match whose format was designed to bring chess into the sports mainstream. Its participants included women champions, influencers, and prodigies as well as top grandmasters.
The time limit was just 10 minutes per player per game, with a one second per move bonus in the final minute. Draw offers were banned, as were resignations. Halved games were replayed with five minutes each, then with one minute. The US had White in all games, with the rationale that India would have White in a future return series on home ground.
The audience in the Arlington Esports arena was encouraged to cheer and be noisy. Caruana opened with 1 c3 against the world No 4, Arjun Erigaisi, took control, and said afterwards: “The crowd knew I was winning, so I was happy to hear all the noise.”
The US won the match 5-0, with the world No 2, Hikaru Nakamura, defeating the world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, after two replayed draws. Their third game was a rare case of one-minute bullet played over the board. Bullet is a familiar format in online chess, with regular tournaments and an annual championship, but it hardly ever happens across the board due to the hazards of knocked over pieces.
Nakamura v Gukesh provided a frantic scramble of moves, at the end of which Nakamura grabbed his opponent’s king, stood up, and threw the checkmated monarch into the cheering crowd. Is this the future of international chess? Not very likely …
It was also a successful weekend for English players and England teams in Rabac, Croatia, where GM John Nunn, 70, won the silver medal at the European over-65 championship with an unbeaten 7/9 score. Nunn had previously won gold in 2023, but the Georgian GM, Zurab Sturua, retained his title from 2024 by a superior tie-break.
Nunn led by half a point at the start of the final round, but in one of his books he had identified last round nerves as a recurring weakness, and he opted for a complex drawing line against the Najdorf Sicilian. John Pigott finished fourth with 6.5/9, while Nunn’s wife, Petra Fink-Nunn, won bronze in the women’s over-50 championship with an unbeaten 6/9.
In one of Nunn’s best wins, he smoothly and instructively outplayed his Dutch opponent in a bishops of opposite colours ending.
3993: 1…Qd8! threatens both 2…Bb4+ winning the queen (White’s d5 knight is pinned) and 2…Qxd5+ and 3…Qxh1 when Black is two pawns up. If 1…Qd8 2 Ke2 Bg4+ 3 Kf2 Qh4+ (back to the queen’s original square) and 4…Qxe1.
