Luke McShane

The Sinquefield Cup in St Louis ended last week in victory for Fabiano Caruana, who thereby took first place in the 2023 Grand Chess Tour, extending his impressive run of form this year. Caruana’s victory pushes his rating back over the 2800 mark, securing his place just behind Carlsen in the rating list.    The event saw an early disappointment as Jan-Krzysztof Duda withdrew due to illness after drawing his first round game against Anish Giri. As is the custom, that result was removed from the standings, and in the first four rounds of the tournament just one decisive game was played. Three cheers for the internet wordsmith who coined the ingenious palindrome ‘Duda’s draw not in. It onwards a dud!

Before the seventh round of the European Team Championship in Montenegro, I woke with a peculiar malaise I could not explain. Answer soon came, in an alarming salvo of diarrhoea. My hopes for an easy ride in my game against the German grandmaster Alexander Donchenko did not last long, and I landed in a tenable but thankless middlegame where all the winning chances lay with my young opponent. I clung on for a draw after 52 moves, shivering through the game in spite of ample layers of clothing. Straight after, I crawled into bed and fell asleep. That match, which we tied 2-2 against the eventual silver medallists, was played on the top board, but alas it was downhill thereafter. I sat out the following match against Serbia, which we lost. (Serbia went on to get the gold medals.

My hotel room in Montenegro enjoys a picturesque view of the Adriatic sea. It’s a 15 minute drive to Sveti Stefan, the island where Fischer faced Spassky in their 1992 rematch, 20 years after Fischer won the world title in Reykjavik. I am here playing for England in the biennial European Team Championship, where we have just finished in 6th place in the Open event, and 13th in the Women’s event. More on that to follow, but for now, some highlights from the event. In the following game, a young Greek grandmaster defeated his elite Azeri opponent in ferocious style.

English grandmasters Michael Adams and John Nunn both won gold medals at the World Senior Championships in Palermo, which ended earlier this month. Adams was the top seed in the over-50 section, while Nunn was the top seed in the over-65s, and the reigning champion. With one round to go, both were half a point off the lead, so the double victory looked like a long shot. Both won, both finished on 8.5/11, and both finished in first place on tiebreak! Adams won his final round game in style against a Slovakian grandmaster.

Large chess tournaments are usually played according to the ‘Swiss’ pairing system. In each round, players are grouped according to their total points amassed so far, and match-ups for the next round take place between players in the same score-group. Even in a large field of diverse abilities, the potential winners tend to encounter their toughest competitors, and the lower seeded players are not forever overwhelmed by the strength of their opposition. The ‘Swiss Gambit’, an obscure piece of chess lingo, refers to the idea that a savvy competitor might ‘gambit’ a draw or loss in an early round, so as to face easier games in the middle of the tournament and recover lost ground just in time for a high final placing.

Bodhana Sivanandan won the gold medal in the World Girls U8 Championship in Sharm El Sheikh earlier this month, making her the first English world youth champion since 1998, when Nicholas Pert won the U18 event and Ruth Sheldon won the Girls U18. I witnessed Sivanandan’s enormous talent when we played a casual game of speed chess at ChessFest in Trafalgar Square in July. I knew of her accomplishments, which included tying for second place in the UK women’s blitz championship at the age of seven last year. But naively, I chose an offbeat, slightly risky opening. It soon transpired that she knew it at least as well as I did. A few moves later I was, for a brief moment, utterly lost. I won the game in the end, but was left in no doubt about her prospects.

The Jonathan Penrose Memorial Chess Challenge, held at Colchester Town Hall on 7 October, was a felicitous tribute to the ten-time British champion, who died in 2021, and would have turned 90 on that very day. Before it was razed by Boudicca, Colchester was one of the earliest Roman settlements on these isles. More recently, it was awarded city status as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, and 2023 has been deemed a ‘Year of Celebration’ for the city, with a series of cultural events. Penrose, who was born in Colchester, was honoured with a simultaneous display given by eight-time British champion Michael Adams.

Magnus Carlsen was, as he said, ‘completely crushed’ in the second round of the Qatar Masters earlier this month. His opponent, 23-year-old Alisher Suleymenov from Kazakhstan, is a grandmaster, but on paper nowhere near to the level of the world elite. He played the game of his life, but his achievement was undermined by Carlsen’s intemperate comment (on X) that ‘as soon as I saw my opponent was wearing a watch early in the game, I lost my ability to concentrate’. Predictably, this began a frenzy of gossip, though the world no. 1 soon clarified that he was not accusing his opponent of cheating. The sad truth is that a miasma of mistrust is encroaching year by year.

‘Chess, an ancient game of strategy…’ – that’s what they write on the packaging in department stores. But in real life, playing a game of chess feels more like fighting fires, half of which you kindled yourself. Whatever grand ambitions you have, right now your queen is under attack and the next priority is your shaky kingside. But, first let’s go and attack that bishop! A game of chess is just one damned thing after another. Even for the world’s best players, any planning is mostly implicit, since they recognise the contours of the game at a glance. In such and such position, the bishop belongs here and the knight belongs there, and this is the pawn break you aim for.

A queen and king can force mate against a lone king – that is as fundamental as it gets. Almost all regular players know that to be true, and they also know how to execute it. But players are regularly confronted by the distinction between ‘knowing that’, and ‘knowing how’. Many know that king, bishop and knight can force mate against a lone king. But I would bet with confidence that only a minority of those who know that fact could actually demonstrate it. The technique is somewhat abstruse and, since the endgame arises so rarely, it is easily forgotten. Imagine – you spent an hour practising this endgame… but that was five years ago. Now you’ve actually got it on the board, but it is, so to speak, a cold, rainy night in Stoke.