Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2025 i British Chess Magazine

The European Team Championship was held in Batumi, Georgia, from 5-14 October. Always a strong event, it gathered most of the European elite players. England was represented by what appears to be its best squad: Vitiugov, Adams, Maroroa Jones, McShane and Royal – everybody else on the rating list above or between these players is more or less retired. As usual in team championships, the fate of the team depends on the form of its players. In Batumi, nobody was clearly in bad form, only Gawain Maroroa Jones was in good form. Usually, one player in good form doesn’t suffice and the final result – a shared seventh to eleventh, ninth on tie-breaks, was an adequate finish for the team that had the fifth starting rank. After the starting minimal…

Napoleon Bonaparte has entered history as a kind of demon of aggression, the arch-conqueror whose armies trampled Europe beneath their boots. Yet the truth, which history books tend to veil in moral generalities, is that Napoleon rarely declared war. It was the Austrians, the Russians, and the Prussians who came against him, intent on reversing the new order that had arisen from the French Revolution. He was, in essence, the armed emissary of an idea. When I was studying at Dulwich College, my two obsessions were the German language and the game of chess – that most peaceful metaphor for war. I treated chess as one might treat a formal subject of study, a discipline requiring the same devotion one gave to an A level. Our school team won one…

The 2025 FIDE World Cup in Goa saw a month of tense matches, long days and sudden reversals. It began on 1 November with 206 players. It finished on 26 November with one clear story. Nineteen-year-old Javokhir Sindarov from Uzbekistan became the youngest World Cup winner in history. Sindarov defeated Chinese number one Wei Yi in rapid tiebreaks, took the trophy and secured a place in the 2026 Candidates. Andrey Esipenko took third place and the final Candidates ticket. Wei reached his first Candidates as well, but his only loss of the event came when it hurt most. The event had a prize fund of two million dollars and was held at the Rio resort in Goa. Each match consisted of two classical games, followed when needed by rapid and…

Grandmaster of Chess Composition 1 John Rice (Surbiton) Mate in2 ORIGINAL 2 John Rice (Surbiton) Mate in 3 ORIGINAL 3 Stanislav Hudak (Slovakia) Helpmate in 3 - 2 solutions ORIGINAL 4 Abdelaziz Onkoud (France) Helpmate in 3.5 – 3 solutions ORIGINAL SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS This month’s originals Three grandmaster productions this month! There are two by John Rice, which should be enjoyable to solve. The other is by Abdelaziz Onkoud, and may test your solving prowess longer. (But please don’t hesitate to just read ahead to see and enjoy the solutions!) In Abdelaziz’s helpmate, White, rather unusually, begins, so there are three collaborative wbwbwbw# sequences. In Stanislav’s helpmate you’re looking for two bwbwbw# sequences. Changed play… …is at the heart of so many ‘mate in two’ problems. In the case…

In a spectacular show of force, “Team FIDE” claimed gold without losing a single match. Azerbaijan took second place, while China secured third after defeating Kazakhstan. The standout performer for Team FIDE was 24-year-old IM Polina Shuvalova, who scored 9.5/10 on board three – a Carlsen-style performance with a rating level of 2827. The Women’s World Team Chess Championship took place from 17th to 24th November in Linares, Spain. There were 12 teams participating, split into two pools of similar strength – A and B – playing in a round-robin tournament. Pool A comprised Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Spain, Peru, the USA and Team FIDE. Pool B comprised China, France, Georgia (the 2023 winners), India, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. The time control was 45 minutes for the whole game with an increment of…