Last week’s European team championships at Budva, Montenegro saw the England open squad narrowly miss out on medals, but there was a fresh success for Lan Yao, 22, a rising star of the women’s game. Yao’s unbeaten 5.5/8 on second board for England women earned her the bronze medal as well as her first international master norm at men’s/open level, and was achieved against a high class field.
In the final two rounds Yao drew with the former world champion Anna Ushenina of Ukraine, then defeated Sweden’s Pia Cramling, for decades the No 1 woman in western Europe, by effective use of her two bishops. Her rating gain of 26 Fide points means that she is now ranked England’s No 1 woman ahead of the popular commentator Jovanka Houska.
Yao learned chess at six, trained in Shanghai, and performed well in the world girls championship before taking her history degree and MA in education at University College London. Her chess heroes are Hungary’s Polgar sisters, and besides winning the British women’s title two years running, her record includes draws with GMs Keith Arkell and Danny Gormally as well as a crushing blitz victory against a strong Russian GM.
For England’s open/men’s team, rounds six and seven (of nine) brought a rare sense of deja vu of the 1980s, the brilliant decade when for three Olympiads running they took silver medals behind the Soviets, and were denied gold by just half a game point at Dubai 1986. In that era chess featured on mainstream television, while spectators queued to watch a world title match in central London.
England trounced the Netherlands in round seven, then drew 2-2 with co-leaders Germany, before 1.5-2.5 defeats against Serbia and Armenia dropped them to sixth place.
Serbia, led by two transferred Russians, won gold. It was the nation’s best result since the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, which used to be a regular Olympiad medal winner led by its renowned Serb trio of Svetozar Gligoric, Aleksandar Matanovic and Borislav Ivkov.
Germany, for whom Vincent Keymer, 19, advanced into the world top 15, won silver, while Armenia, a small nation of three million whose top GM Levon Aronian emigrated to the US, added European bronze to their 2022 Olympiad silver medals.
The world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, took the individual board one gold with 6.5/8, gained a fraction of a rating point despite some misadventures against 2500-rated opponents, and played an impressive final win in the style of Anatoly Karpov. Carlsen will play no more classical chess this year, but heads to Toronto for next week’s final of the online Champions Tour, then to Uzbekistan where, starting on Boxing Day, he will defend his World Rapid and Blitz crowns.
Almost all the England team performed well, with Nikita Vitiugov sixth among top boards, David Howell fifth among second boards, and Luke McShane fourth among fourth boards.
Vitiugov displayed calm assurance and almost always seemed in control of his position, Howell’s deep strategic games aimed at favourable endings where he could Grind like a Grandmaster, while McShane, whose 4.5/7 was the team’s best percentage, was resilient and imaginative. Fatigue caught up with Michael Adams in the final round after four weeks of competition at the World over-50 and the Euros, as did lack of practice with Ravi Haria, who was selected after a year’s absence from tournaments.
England might well have secured a medal but for the absence of Gawain Jones, who has competed rarely since the tragic death of his wife six months ago. Hopefully, Jones will be available again for the biennial world team championship and the 180-nation Budapest Olympiad in 2024. Olympiad medals look out of reach against the heavyweight trio of India, China and the US, while the issue with the World Teams, in which England were second to Russia in 2019, is that only 10 nations are chosen to take part.
England’s problem for the future is that its top four plus Jones are all aged over 30, with Howell the youngest at 33. In the past two years the new English generation in their early 20s have rarely achieved grandmaster norms or performed consistently above a 2500 rating.
Other recent talents like Yang-Fan Zhou and James Adair abandoned serious chess after narrowly failing to become GMs. The most likely candidate now is probably Shreyas Royal, 14, who will make his next GM norm attempt at next week’s London Classic.
What could be done? Arguably the most influential spark for the English chess explosion of the 70s and 80s was Jim Slater’s speech at the opening ceremony of Hastings 1972-73, when the financier announced awards of £5,000 for the first British grandmaster and £2,500 for the next five to reach the title.
Slater’s choice of six awards was deliberate, as there were then seven obvious candidates and he wanted to create some competition, but not too much. Paradoxically, the only one to miss out was William Hartston, who produced the performance of his life at that Hastings, and was just half a point short of a GM norm when he lost his final two games to Bent Larsen and Wolfgang Uhlmann, who took the top two places with Hartston third.
In 2023, GMs require much more than just the title, although some financial recognition at that level would encourage more talents to continue serious chess beyond their early 20s.
At present, the 2022 British champion, Harry Grieve, aged 22 and rated 2466, may be the only English under-25 with a near-term chance for 2600. Royal and, substituting British for English, Scotland’s Frederick Waldhausen Gordon, 13, who already has his first IM norm, are long range contenders.
£10,000 and £5,000 awards to the first three English players aged under 25 to achieve 2600 ratings could make a significant difference to this bleak prognosis in the next decade. The US Samford Fellowships, which have awarded more than $2m in scholarships since 1987, have sparked more than 20 high class GM careers.
It is very unlikely to happen, of course. Neither the new £500,000 government grant nor the English Chess Federation’s income from chess trusts could be used in that way, while corporate sponsorship for English chess has dried up since its heyday in the 80s. But if a sufficiently generous private donor ever comes along, the XXX 2600 Grandmaster Award should be very high on the list of priorities.
3895 1 Re8+! Rxe8 2 Qxg7+! Kxg7 3 Nh5+ and 4 Rxh3 wins.
