Michael Adams, the seven-time British champion and still the England No 2 at 51, shares the lead with the No 3 seed GM Dan Fernandez, 28, before Sunday’s final round (10am BST start) of the 2023 championship at Leicester. All the games can be watched free and live on chess24.com.
Adams won his individual game against his rival in Tuesday’s fourth round. Fernandez’s opening surprise with the rare Scandinavian Defence 1 e4 d5 failed when White trapped the black king in the centre and broke through with 20 f5! and 21 d5!.
Next up, in round five, was the defending champion, Harry Grieve, 22. Once again experience triumphed, as the Cornishman established an endgame edge, then patiently and systematically transmuted it into two extra pawns.
Adams appears not to have lost a classical game to a sub-2600 English opponent since Mark Hebden beat him at Kilkenny 2006. With the white pieces, his unbeaten streak against sub-2600 English players is even longer, stretching back to the 1990s. And it was Hebden who took on Adams in round six. The 65-year-old was fresh from his double gold in last week’s European over-50 championship in Swidnica, Poland, when he led the England team who won all their nine matches, and had a personal score of 7.5/8 on top board.
Hebden kept his title chances alive when Adams uncharacteristically failed to win a favourable endgame, while Fernandez scored a fine attacking win to regain the shared lead.
Both Adams and Fernandez won in round seven, although the younger GM’s performance was again more convincing as he outplayed Hebden’s favourite King’s Indian, while Adams defeated the 2021 champion Nick Pert despite standing worse at one stage.
Leading British Championship scores after seven of the nine rounds were Adams and Fernandez on 6, Yichen Han 5, then a logjam of 14 players on 4.5. Han, 15, is the No 1 junior from the Netherlands but has resided in England for several years. Katarzyna Toma and Lan Yao lead the race for the women’s title, which is incorporated in the open event, with 4/7.
The championships are taking place at De Montfort University, which houses the English Chess Federation’s library of thousands of tournament books and magazines from yesteryear. The total entry for the congress, which includes seniors, junior age groups from under-21 to under-eight, rapid and blitz tournaments, and events for weaker players, has set a record of close to 1,500 players.
The last time the congress visited Leicester was in 1960, an event with literally painful memories for this writer. I was among the leaders for the entire championship until a fateful final round, when a middle game pawn blunder to Michael Haygarth led to several hours of suffering while he methodically increased his advantage. It was the last game of the entire congress to finish, at 11pm, and when I returned to my digs I found that the landlady had locked the front door and could not be roused. I eventually managed to climb in through a window, but at the cost of a badly bruised knee …
Low rated competitors will be interested in Fide’s plans to combat deflation in the global system where the monthly list with the latest results now includes millions of names. It is probable that from January 2024 the rating floor will be raised from 1000 to 1400, with smaller increases all the way up to 1800. The intention is to combat the phenomenon where the current system cannot keep pace with fast improving juniors playing far above their nominal strength.
David Howell will be England’s only representative in the Fide World Cup, the 206-player knockout which begins in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Sunday (midday BST start). Each round is a two-game mini-match, followed by rapid and blitz tiebreaks.
The England No 1, rated 2677, is seeded No 41. He has a first-round bye, followed by a pairing against the winner between the Ecuador veteran Carlos Matamoros (2455) and Croatia’s No 2, Ante Brkic (2608). After that, it gets progressively harder. In the following rounds Howell is seeded to meet China’s Wang Hao (2699), Azerbaijan’s Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (2746), and India’s rising star Dommaraju Gukesh (2751). Howell is not out of it, despite now being less of a player than a commentator and columnist, since his last two events were his gold medal at the 2022 Chennai Olympiad and his unbeaten 7.5/9 in the Norwegian League, including a draw with Magnus Carlsen.
Carlsen is the No 1 seed in this, the only major individual event he has never won, with Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana of the US his main rivals. The reigning world champion, Ding Liren, and the 20-year-old world No 4, Alireza Firouzja, are absent. The women’s world champion, Ju Wenjun, fresh from retaining her crown, is the No 1 seed for the 103-player Women’s World Cup.
3878: 1...Qe7! 2 Qxe7 (if 2 Qe5 f6) Rxg2+ 3 Kh1 Rg1++! 4 Kxg1 Rg8+ forces mate.
