by At last week’s European team championships in Budva, Montenegro, England’s opening squad narrowly missed out on the medals, but Lan Yao, 22, a rising star in the women’s game, enjoyed fresh success. England’s women earned her the bronze medal as well as her first international masters norm at the men’s open level, and it was achieved against a top-class field.
In the final two rounds, Lan Yao together with former world champion Anna Ushenina, from Ukraine, then defeated Sweden’s Pia Cramling, the No 1 woman in western Europe for many years, by effectively using her two bishops. Her rating gain of 26 Fide points means she is now ranked as the No. 1 England ahead of popular commentator Jovanka Houska.
Lan Yao learned chess at the age of six, trained in Shanghai, and performed well in the girls’ world championships before graduating with a history degree and an MA in education at University College London. Their chess heroes are the Polish sisters of Hungary, and in addition to winning the British women’s title two years in a row, there are draws with GMs Keith Arkell and Danny Gormally as well as a blitz victory against a strong Russian GM.
For the England/men’s open team, rounds six and seven (out of nine) brought a rare sense of deja vu to the 1980s, the great decade when they won silver medals behind the Soviets for three Olympics passed, and they were only denied half a hundred times. match point at Dubai 1986. In that era chess was featured on mainstream television, with audiences queuing to watch a world title match in Central London.
England beat the Netherlands in round seven, then drew 2-2 with joint leaders Germany, before losing 1.5-2.5 to Serbia and Armenia dropping them to sixth.
Serbia, led by two Russian transfers, won gold. It was the nation’s best result since the breakup of former Yugoslavia, which used to be a regular Olympic medalist led by its famous Serbian trio of Svetozar Gligoric, Aleksandar Matanovic and Borislav Ivkov.
Germany, 19 years old, advancing into the world’s top 15, won silver, while Armenia, a small nation of three million whose top GM Levon Aronian immigrated to the US, took bronze European with their 2022 Olympic silver medals.
Magnus Carlsen, the world No. Carlsen will have no more classic chess this year, but heads to Toronto for next week’s online Champions Tour final, then to Uzbekistan where, starting on Boxing Day, he will defend his World Rapid crown and Blitz.
Almost every English team performed well, with Nikita Vitiugov in sixth place among the top boards, David Howell in fifth place among the second boards, and Luke McShane in fourth among the fourth boards.
Vitiugov showed calm determination and always looked in control of his position, Howell’s deep strategic games were aimed at favorable ends where he could Grind like a Grandmaster, and McShane, who was 4.5/7 as the best percentage of the team, resilient and imaginative. Michael Adams tired in the final after four weeks of competition at the World over-50s and the Euros, as did Ravi Haria, who was picked up after a year’s absence from competitions, lack of practice.
England may have secured a medal but for the absence of Gawain Jones, who has rarely competed since the tragic death of his wife six months ago. Jones is expected to be available again for the biennial world team championships and the 180-nation Olympics in Budapest in 2024. Olympic medals are irrelevant against the heavyweight trio of India, China and the USA, and the question with the World Teams, in which England were runners-up in Russia in 2019, is that only 10 nations are selected to take part.
The problem for England going forward is that the top four plus Jones are all over 30, with Howell the youngest at 33. In the last two years the new generation of Englishmen have rarely Early 20s grandmaster norms out or did consistently above a 2500 rating. .
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Other recent talents like Yang-Fan Zhou and James Adair abandoned serious chess after 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 biggest spark of the English chess explosion in the 70s and 80s was Jim Slater’s speech at the 1972-73 Hastings opening ceremony, when the financier announced £5,000 awards for the first grandmaster British and £2,500 for the next five. find the title.
Slater’s choice of six awards was deliberate, as there were seven clear candidates at the time and he wanted to create some competition, but not too much. Paradoxically, the only loser was William Hartston, who gave the performance of his life at that Hastings, and was only half a point short of the GM norm when he lost his last two games to Bent Larsen and Wolfgang Uhlmann , who took. the top two places with Hartston in third.
In 2023, GMs want a lot more than just the title, although some financial recognition at that level would encourage more talents to continue playing serious chess past their early 20s.
At the moment, 22-year-old British champion Harry Grieve, who is 22 and rated 2466, may be the only English under-25 with a near-term chance of 2600. Royal and, putting the British in center of England, Scotland Frederick Waldhausen Gordon, 13, who already his first IM norm, is a long range competitor.
Awards of £10,000 and £5,000 for the first three English under-25 players to reach 2600 ratings could make a significant difference to this bleak prognosis over the next decade. The Samford USA Fellowships, which have awarded more than $2m in scholarships since 1987, have inspired more than 20 top GM careers.
It is, of course, highly unlikely to happen. Neither the new £500,000 government grant nor the English Chess Federation’s income from chess trusts could be used in that way, and corporate sponsorship for English chess has declined since the 80s. But if a generous enough 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 wins 3 Nh5+ and 4 Rxh3.
