UK Blitz chess final pits grandmasters against a golden generation

Juniors make up nearly half the field, including a nine-year-old top seed, while in Kolkata Magnus Carlsen surged to victory in the Tata Steel Rapid.

Finals of the annual UK Blitz Championships take place in Leamington Spa on Saturday (noon start), when the open and women’s titles will be decided by two 16-player all-play-all competitions and 15 rounds of speed chess.

The 32 finalists are survivors from an original entry of more than 500, who competed at eight regional qualifying competitions across the UK. Four grandmasters are in the field: Eldar Gasanov of Ukraine, the 2472-rated defending champion; Danny Gormally, the 2490-rated top seed; the veteran Peter Wells, and England’s youngest GM, Shreyas Royal, 15.

Across the two tournaments, nearly half the field are juniors, representatives of a golden generation which has been breaking age records.

The time limit is three minutes per player for the entire game, plus a two seconds per move increment, so that every round will last only a quarter of an hour or so.

The women’s championship will have a key match in the very first round today at noon on Saturday, which will be shown live on lichess.

Despite being only nine years old, Bodhana Sivanandan is England’s No 2 female blitz player and is the 2157-rated top seed at Leamington, following her performance at the European Women’s Blitz Championship in Monte Carlo, where she held her own against the continental elite.

Her round one opponent, Elmira Mirzoeva, is a former winner of the Russian Blitz Cup for women. She won the UK Women’s Blitz in 2022, and is the 2128-rated No 2 seed at Leamington. Sivanandan is sometimes a slow starter in tournaments, so the early pairing favours the older player. The third seed, Kamila Hryshchenko, rated 2065 and a former world girls champion, is also a contender.

The other current event for some of England’s best players is the €100,000 (£83,000) European championship, which is now in progress at Petrovac, Montenegro, which has its 11th and final round next Tuesday. Unlike the $2.6m Ding Liren v Gukesh Dommaraju world championship series in Singapore, which starts just a week later on 25 November, the European crown is a low-profile event.

It is, however, a huge open competition, with 339 entrants in Montenegro, whose major attraction for its top competitors is as a qualifier for the 2025 knockout World Cup, where even first round losers receive $3,000 prize money.

The top 20 from the European Championship qualify for the World Cup, and this fact dominates the tournament strategy for almost everymost grandmaster entrants. After Wednesday’s sixth round, when Aleksandar Indjic of Serbia led on 5.5/6, there were nine players with 5/6 or better, followed by 27 on 4.5/6.

Translated to 11 rounds, this means that scorers of 7.5/11 or higher will have good chances to qualify, while most of those with 7/11 will be eliminated by speed tie-break mini-matches.

England’s only highly seeded player is the former Russian Nikita Vitiugov, who had four points after six rounds, including a quick win against Icelandic veteran Hannes Stefansson in round two, but still needs a better second-half performance to be in the mix for a World Cup place.

Matthew Wadsworth, 24, and Jonah Willow, 21, are also part of England’s seven-player delegation in Petrovac. For them, there is a different priority, the grandmaster title. Wadsworth has two GM norms and is seeking his third and final norm, while Willow scored his first norm at Fagernes, Norway, last month.

Wadsworth defeated a low-ranked opponent in round one, then halved three games in a row against 2600+ grandmasters, of which the best was an 86-move marathon against the Czech Republic’s No 1, David Navara, which went all the way to a king and pawn ending.

However, both Wadsworth and Willow are now behind their GM norm requirements. If they fail in Montenegro, they will try again at the London Fide Masters, which begins on 29 November, and Hastings.

European Championship games are watchable online, starting at 2.15pm GMT daily.

Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, triumphed in impressive style at the Tata Steel Rapid in Kolkata, which finished on Friday. The Norwegian legend, 33, scored an unbeaten 7.5/9, which included six successive wins, in an elite field of which half were Indians. The final table can be found here.

Carlsen had an escape in the very first round against Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, who finished second with 5.5. The 19-year-old chose 32…. Ra7? when 32…Kf5! 33 Rxb7 Nc5! 34 Nxd4+ Kxf4 35 Nxe6+ Ke3!! threatening Ra1 mate, would have won.

Carlsen then took over. He scored a smooth round-four win over India’s Sunilduth Narayanan, beat Wesley So of the US in the endgame, then consolidated his lead by defeating Arjun Erigaisi, who has just achieved a 2800 classical rating, in a complex battle.

On the final day, Carlsen clinched first prize with subtle endgames against Germany’s Vincent Keymer, who at one stage had five pawns for a knight, and Russia’s Daniil Dubov, a former Carlsen aide, who was outplayed in a rook and pawn ending.

Carlsen now goes on to this weekend’s blitz tournament against the same nine opponents, but he has already shown himself in peak form before he defends his World Rapid and World Blitz titles in New York at the end of December.

3946 1 Qc7! so that if Bxc7 2 g5 mate, while White threatens 2 Qxf4. The game ended 1…Bxh6 2 Qe5+ Kg5 3 h4+! Kxh4 4 Rh3+! Kg5 (if Kxh3 5 Qg3 mate) 5 Qe7+ and Black resigned in the face of 5…f6 6 Qe3+ Kxg4 7 Qg3 mate. The complete game can be found here.