In just two years, the Isle of Wight Masters at Ryde school has become established as one of Britain’s most popular events. Its scenic ambience, impressive organisation and competitive spirit have combined to attract a strong international entry.
Last weekend GM Matthew Wadsworth emerged first on tie-break ahead of IM Tobias Koelle (Germany) and GM Matthew Turner (Scotland) after the trio all scored 7/9. Wadsworth also won in 2025.
Round seven proved a decisive moment as Wadsworth defeated GM Thomas Beerdsen (Netherlands) in a picturesque finale of queens, rooks and a promoted pawn, Koelle won against England’s youngest GM, Shreyas Royal, while Turner upset the top seed, GM Gawain Jones. It was a career-best result for the 50-year-old, who teaches chess at Millfield.
Can the good form of Wadsworth and Royal, who won the elite Zagreb tournament in November, earn either or both of them selection for the five-man England team for the Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in September? England’s current team is ageing. Michael Adams is in his 50s, Luke McShane in his 40s, David Howell and Jones in their middle or late 30s, although Howell did win the individual gold in 2022. An older player’s form can suddenly drop off a cliff. There are five in an Olympiad team, so the selectors will make the difficult decision.
Meanwhile in Austria, Freddy Waldhausen Gordon, 15, probably Scotland’s best ever junior talent, completed his qualification for the IM title by scoring 6/9 in the Graz Open. He even had a chance for his first GM norm in the final round, but lost to Poland’s GM Bartosz Socko.
One of Waldhausen Gordon’s previous IM norms was achieved in the 2025 European Team Championship, where he scored 50% as No 1 and five times prevented Scotland from being whitewashed. The fourth-former at George Heriot’s sschool, Edinburgh, probably has even more potential to reach the international elite than Scotland’s all-time No 1, GM and three-time British champion, Jonathan Rowson, whose rating peak was 2599.
A sponsor to help him with specialist coaching and travel to top tournaments is needed, especially since Waldhausen Gordon is ineligible for the £1.5m of government money now available for the most promising English talents.
Edinburgh is a major financial centre, as was London in the 1970s and 80s when Lloyds and NatWest, stockbrokers and insurance companies all backed chess in a decade when England won three Olympiad silver medals behind the Soviet Union’s gold.
England’s Supratit Banerjee, 12 this week, and Bodhana Sivanandan, 10, finished first and second in the ChessKids under-13 youth championship ahead of a flock of other global talents. The event is traditionally strong, and its under-16 version next weekend includes Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, Faustino Oro and Andy Woodward, who are all among the world’s best juniors.
Banerjee, who defeated Sivanandan 3.5-1.5 in the final, already has his first IM norm from the 2025 British Championship and is now targeting a 2400 rating level and the IM title. The Sutton grammar pupil plays 1 g3 a lot because it simplifies preparation and “on weekdays I’m usually able to give only one or two hours to chess because of a lot of school work”.
The format was three minutes per game, with a one second per move increment. First and second prizes were $1,500 and $1,000.
Sivanandan already has the youngest ever WGM norm, breaking the age 11 mark of the all-time women’s No 2, Hou Yifan. Her 5/9 total at Graz gained 102 rating points to a new personal best of 2265, while she was unbeaten last month at Monaco in 11 rounds of the European Women’s Rapid.
At the Cannes Open in France, which continues, Sivanandan began with 4/6 gained another 85 rating points, and so qualified for the Fide Master (FM) title at open level, which requires a player to reach a 2300 Fide rating. She is the second youngest woman ever to achieve this significant mark, outpaced only by the all-time No 1, Judit Polgar.
Before the Fide world championship Candidates, which starts in Pegeia, Cyprus, on 28 March, there are two major tournaments which both began on Wednesday. Fabiano Caruana, the US champion, world No 3, and Candidates favourite, is competing in the St Louis Masters, while several top GMs who failed to qualify for the Candidates, notably the world Nos 4 and 5, Vincent Keymer and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, are playing in Prague, Czech Republic. The reigning world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, is also in Prague, making another attempt to rediscover his best form.
In round one, Gukesh drew with the US’s Hans Niemann, whose explosive 2022 dispute with the world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, will be the subject of a Netflix documentary, Untold: Chess Mates, to be premiered on 7 April; Keymer lost to Jorden van Foreest of the Netherlands, while Abdusattorov won from a lost position. The Candidates will have an average rating of 2749, and Prague is not far short of that on 2710.
Finally, Olimpbase is back. The valuable database website, containing all games from every Olympiad from 1927 to 2022, as well as from many other major team competitions, has been out of action for a few years but has now been painstakingly restored. Olimpbase really merits a subsidy by Fide for its historic contents.
4013: 1 Rg4+ Rg6 (1…Kh6 2 Qf4+ Kxh5 3 Rf5+ Qg5 4 Qxg5 mate) 2 h6+! Kxh6 3 Rxg6+ hxg6 4 Qh3+ Qh4 5 Qxh4+ Kg7 6 Qh8 mate.
