Tag: UK

There was more norm success at the 4NCL as England junior Matthew Wadsworth achieved his first IM result.

Wadsworth had a tremendous season, remaining unbeaten and amassing a score of 7.5/10.

Wadsworth drew with IM Lorin D’Costa, GM Simon Williams and most notably, GM David Smerdon in what was a tremendous rearguard action that lasted 95 moves, most of which was spent the exchange for a pawn down in the endgame.

What strikes me the most about Matthew’s play is how difficult he is to beat.

Here is the final position of his game against IM Lorin D’Costa.

Wadsworth had been defending for most of the game but White could not break through.
D’Costa – Wadsworth

source

The 2016 London Chess Classic will be the eighth edition of the World’s most prestigious Chess Tournament and will climax the 2016 Grand Chess Tour.

The winning formula of elite 10 player all play all, chess festival, conference and free school events will take place once again. The GCT players and wild cards will be announced in early March.

The 8th London Chess Classic will attract players of all levels to London as well as chess educators, spectators, and children just beginning to learn the game. I hope that by publicising the dates to the chess world over nine months in advance, other organisers of chess events will be able to avoid a clash of dates which would not be in the interests of the top players and the chess public at large.

The London Chess Classic will begin with the Pro-Biz cup on Thursday, December 8th with round one beginning the following day. The tournament concludes on Sunday 18 December.

For more information, visit www.londonchessclassic.com

LCC 2015 and GCT 2015 winner was Magnus Carlsen

To adapt Gary Lineker’s famous football quote (and not for the first time): chess is a simple game. The players play longplay, rapidplay and blitz and in the end Magnus Carlsen wins.

The final day of the London Classic had the lot – a mind-numbing, eight-hour extravaganza of chess in three different formats, brilliant moves, crazy strategies, outrageous slices of luck – and somehow you just knew that Magnus Carlsen would come through it all to snatch first place in the tournament and in the inaugural Grand Chess Tour. He did so and deserves the plaudits.

The final day of the London Classic had the lot – a mind-numbing, eight-hour extravaganza of chess in three different formats, brilliant moves, crazy strategies, outrageous slices of luck – and somehow you just knew that Magnus Carlsen would come through it all to snatch first place in the tournament and in the inaugural Grand Chess Tour. He did so and deserves the plaudits.

But let’s also hear it for his co-stars in the last-day drama – Alexander Grischuk, Anish Giri and Maxime Vachier- Lagrave – who deserve to share some of the winner’s stardust.

London Classic, final scores: 1. Magnus Carlsen 5½, 2. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 5½, 3. Anish Giri 5½, 4. Levon Aronian 5, 5-7. Alexander Grischuk, Fabiano Caruana, Michael Adams 4½, 8. Hikaru Nakamura 4, 9. Viswanathan Anand 3½, 10. Veselin Topalov 2½.

London Chess Classic