England seniors won triple European gold on Wednesday as the generation that was second only to the USSR in the 1980s and 1990s continued to show its enduring strength. The nine-day tournament at Terme Catez, Slovenia, included 21 over-50 teams and 30 over-65s.
England’s all-grandmaster over-50 squad of John Emms, Glenn Flear, Keith Arkell, Nigel Davies and Stuart Conquest recovered well from a loss to Montenegro in round two, winning their next five matches before a defeat by Hungary in the penultimate round.
In the final round, having met all the other top teams, they were paired down to England’s second team and won 3-1, edging out Hungary and Italy on a game points tie-break as all three scored 14/18 match points. Arkell and Conquest won individual golds, Davies silver and Flear bronze.
Conquest scored the decider in a 2.5-1.5 total in the key match against Italy with the tactic 32…d2+!.
England 65+ were led by the individual world 65+ champion, John Nunn, who had an impressive win in the final round, sacrificing a knight on f5 to reach a winning queen and pawn endgame.
Peter Large scored with an incisive attack against the ultra-solid Fort Knox variation of the French Defence, then tweeted: “I’ve refuted the Fort Knox!”
Tony Kosten, Chris Baker and Nigel Povah completed the team. Final totals were England 17/18, Slovakia 15, Slovenia 14. Baker won individual gold, Nunn, Large and Povah silver.
England’s 50+ women’s team of Sheila Jackson, Natasha Regan, Petra Fink-Nunn, Helen Frostick and Susan Chadwick also won gold, although they were the only women entrants so competed with the men. In last year’s world 50+ event England women also won gold, finishing ahead of the favourites, China.
The next major senior event is the World Senior Championships at Krakow, Poland, from 1-12 July. That is likely to be much harder, with the United States the principal rivals. England, aided by the new £500k government grant for elite chess, will send at least nine teams, with the 50+ led by the over-50 world champion, Michael Adams, and the 65+ by Nunn. In both 2022 and 2023 there was a close 50+ battle with the US, resulting in a gold and silver for each.
Snreyas Royal, 15, has made a fine start in the very strong €60,000 Sharjah Open as he seeks his third and final grandmaster norm and a UK age record for the prestigious title.
The Greenwich teenager won his opening round match against Kazakhstan’ s top GM, Rinat Jumabayev, rated 2595.
Royal lost in round two to the UAE’s No 1, 2629- rated Salem Saleh, then won again in the third round against the No 1 Australian, Temur Kuybokarov, rated 2600, this time checkmating his opponent at the end of a marathon queen and pawns ending.
With two points out of three, Royal is downfloated in Friday’s fourth round to a big fish, Parham Maghsoodloo, Iran’s top grandmaster, a feared attacker, and ranked No 19 in the world with a 2732 rating.
Royal’s tournament performance rating so far is 2733, far above the 2600 he needs for the GM norm, and the rich Sharjah tournament has become potentially the scene for a major break-through in the 15-year-old’s blossoming chess career.
Maghsoodloo v Royal kicks off at 11.15am BST and can be followed move by move on lichess.
Since abdicating the world crown last year, Magnus Carlsen has competed with a new freedom as if relieved of a burden. The No 1 triumphed in Warsaw in the Superbet Poland Rapid and Blitz, despite trailing China’s Wei Yi by 2.5 points after four of its five days. Carlsen made a finishing burst of 10 wins a row, including a defeat of his rival where the final stages were captured on video, then coasted in his final two games to win by half a point.
Wei was still a revelation. At 15, the now 24-year-old was the youngest ever to reach a 2700 elite GM rating, but then he gave priority to his mathematics studies for several years before his impressive return to the tournament circuit at Wijk aan Zee early this year. His playing style is highly tactical, with echoes of the great Mikhail Tal, and he is ready to dazzle at blitz, as evidenced by this brilliancy at Warsaw.
After Warsaw, Carlsen had won seven tournaments in a row online or over-the-board, although none of them have been played at slow classical time limits. His online skills are strong, as in this smooth win in an early round of the Chess.com Classic last week.
An eighth victory looked imminent on Wednesday, when Carlsen led Alireza Firouzja 2-1 in the Grand Final, and had a won rook ending in their fourth game, only to miss a chance to push his e pawn through to victory.
The effect was dramatic, as Firouzja won that game, then the Armageddon tie-break, then repeated the process in their rematch. Firouzja had earlier been so resigned to his expected defeat that he had neglected preparation: “I’m too tired of preparing my openings for him, so I just played my stuff.”
Carlsen’s next classical event will be Norway Chess at Stavanger starting May 27, where his opponents will include the top US pair, Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura, as well as the world champion, Ding Liren, whose poor form in recent months has been attributed by Chess magazine to long Covid.
Before that, there is this weekend’s Casablanca Chess, a novel idea which will be tested at a tournament in Morocco backed by the Casablanca Stock Exchange. Carlsen, the former world champion Vishy Anand, Nakamura and Bassem Amin will compete, using selected positions from famous historical games. Play starts at 4.15pm BST on Saturday and 7.15pm on Sunday, and all games will be broadcast live on chess.com.
3920 It is mate in four by 1…Qh1+ 2 Ke2 Rxe3+! 3 fxe3 (3 Kxe3 Qe4 mate) Qg2+ 4 Kd3 Qd2 mate.
