by At last week’s European team championship in Budva, Montenegro, England’s open team narrowly missed out on medals, but there was new success for 22-year-old Lan Yao, a rising star of women’s football. Lan Yao’s unbeaten 5.5/8 on second board for England women earned her the bronze medal, as well as her first international masters norm at men’s/open level, and she achieved it against a high-class field.
In the final two rounds, Lan Yao drew with former world champion Anna Ushenina of Ukraine and then defeated Sweden’s Pia Cramling, for decades the number one woman in Western Europe, by effectively using her two bishops. Her Fide rating increase of 26 points means she is now England’s number one woman, ahead of popular commentator Jovanka Houska.
Lan Yao learned chess at age six, trained in Shanghai and performed well at the women’s world championship before earning her history degree and master’s degree in education at University College London. Her chess heroes are the Polgar sisters from Hungary, and as well as winning the British women’s title two years in a row, her record includes draws with GMs Keith Arkell and Danny Gormally, as well as a crushing blitz victory against a strong Russian GM.
For the England men’s/open team, rounds six and seven (of nine) brought a strange sense of deja vu from the 1980s, the brilliant decade in which three consecutive Olympics saw them take silver medals behind the Soviets and they were denied the gold by only half a difference. game point in Dubai 1986. At that time, chess was featured on mainstream television, as viewers queued to watch a world title match in central London.
England defeated the Netherlands in the seventh round, 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 Russian transfers, won gold. It was the nation’s best result since the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, which used to be a regular medal winner at the Olympics led by its renowned Serbian trio of Svetozar Gligoric, Aleksandar Matanovic and Borislav Ivkov.
Germany, for whom 19-year-old Vincent Keymer advanced to the world top 15, won silver, while Armenia, a small nation of three million whose top GM Levon Aronian emigrated to the United States, added European bronze to their medals silver at the 2022 Olympic Games.
World number one Magnus Carlsen took gold on the individual board with 6.5/8, won a fraction of a rating point despite some misfortunes against 2500 rated opponents and achieved an impressive final victory in the style of Anatoly Karpov. Carlsen won’t be playing any more classical 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 and Blitz crowns.
Almost the entire England team performed well, with Nikita Vitiugov sixth among first boards, David Howell fifth among second boards and Luke McShane fourth among fourth boards.
Vitiugov was calm and confident and almost always seemed to be in control of his position, Howell’s deep strategic games pointed to favorable endings in which he could Grind like a Grandmaster, while McShane, whose 4.5/7 was the best percentage of the team, he was resilient and imaginative. Fatigue caught up with Michael Adams in the final round after four weeks of competition in the 50-and-over World Cup and the European Championship, as did a lack of practice with Ravi Haria, who was selected after a year’s absence from tournaments. .
England could well 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. Hopefully, Jones will be available again for the biennial world team championships and the 180-nation Budapest Olympiad in 2024. Olympic medals appear out of reach against the heavyweight trio of India, China and the United States, while that the problem with world teams, in which England came second behind Russia in 2019, is that only 10 nations are chosen to participate.
England’s problem for the future is that the front four, plus Jones, are all over 30, with Howell the youngest, at 33. In the last two years, the new English generation in their early 20s has rarely achieved grandmaster standards or has consistently performed above a rating of 2500. .
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Other recent talents such as Yang-Fan Zhou and James Adair quit serious chess after narrowly failing to become GM. The most likely candidate now is probably 14-year-old Shreyas Royal, who will make his next GM norm attempt at next week’s London Classic.
What could be done? Arguably the most influential spark in the English chess explosion of the 1970s and 1980s was Jim Slater’s speech at the 1972-73 Hastings opening ceremony, when the financier announced prizes of £5,000 for the first British grandmaster. and £2,500 for the next five. achieve the title.
Slater’s choice of six awards was deliberate, as there were seven obvious candidates and he wanted to create some competition, but not too much. Paradoxically, the only one who missed out was William Hartston, who put in the performance of a lifetime in that Hastings, and fell just half a point off the GM standard when he lost his last two games to Bent Larsen and Wolfgang Uhlmann, who they won. the first two places with Hartston third.
In 2023, GMs will require much more than just the title, although some financial recognition at that level would encourage more talent to continue serious chess beyond their 20s.
Currently, 2022 British champion Harry Grieve, 22 years old and rated 2,466, may be the only English under-25 player with a short-term chance of 2,600. Royal and, replacing the Englishman with the British, the 13-year-old Scot Frederick Waldhausen Gordon, who already has the first IM standard from him, are long-range contenders.
Prizes of £10,000 and £5,000 to the first three English players under 25 to reach 2,600 ratings could make a significant difference to this gloomy forecast over the next decade. The Samford USA Scholarships, which have awarded more than $2 million in scholarships since 1987, have launched more than 20 high-level careers at GM.
Of course, it is very 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, while corporate sponsorship of English chess has dried up since its heyday in the 1980s. But if If a generous enough private donor ever comes along, the XXX 2600 Grandmaster Award should be very high on the priority list.
3895: 1 Re8+! Rxe8 2 Qxg7+! Rxg7 3 Nh5+ and 4 Rxh3 wins.
