ReachExtra
Knights in their thousands were toppled, castles crumbled, and hundreds of bishops were dethroned…even royalty was under constant threat – as 250 players from more than 60 different countries confronted each other across black and white chequered fields in one of the world’s oldest board games.
Winning first place was Russian Grandmaster Vladislav Artemiev who beat the Chinese Grandmaster Yu Yangyi, winning a total of £25,000. Coming in second and winning £20,000 was 19 year old Indian Grandmaster Karthikeyan Murali, who came in half a point behind.
During the last few weeks of January, a record number of competitors came from all four corners of the earth to the Caleta Hotel, overlooking the picturesque Catalan Bay Village, to take part in the 17th annual Gibraltar Chess Festival hoping for a share in the £200,000 of prizes sponsored by the Gibraltar Government and some of the Rock’s major businesses – among them Gibtelecom, which has been associated with the festival since its small, earliest beginnings.
‘Its growth has been phenomenal, particularly in the past few years where the festival and its games have been covered in real time on the Internet,’ explains Stuart Conquest, director of the event for the past nine years, and associated with it since its inception as official commentator of the matches in the first eight festivals.
And that growth was marked, too, by Gibraltar’s Sport, Culture and Youth Minister Steven Linares who officially welcomed the competitors and formally opened the event.
‘The value of this tournament to us is immense,’ Linares said, adding it was ‘the best open tournament in the world. For little Gibraltar where we only have 32, 0000 people we are very, very proud of this tournament’. And rightly so, for apart from the cash there is the prestige of participation. Several Grand Masters – the top echelon of players – were among this year’s competitors… including a 12-year-old Indian schoolboy, the world’s second youngest Grand Master.
‘There were many more applications to enter than we could accommodate,’ Conquest told Reach. ‘Not only were there the 250 main entrants, but there were also morning sessions for beginners and school children which can attracted a further 100 or so.’
The first chess festivals attracted mainly local Gibraltar players, several from across the border in Spain, and ‘a handful of Brits’, Conquest recalls. ‘And some of those who took part in the first competition have played every year and are still part of the mix.’
A far cry from this year’s festival which has attracted no fewer than 14 players with ratings of 2700 or more, and a further 24 rated between 2600 and 2700 – the big guns of chess.
And they have come from as far afield as Australia and Argentina, China and Chile, India and Indonesia and a veritable United Nations mix of other countries. The favourite to win this year had been French 28 year old Grandmaster Vachier-Lagrave, currently number six in the world.
Second favourite was last year’s winner of the Armenian Levon Aronian who was going for his third Gibraltar success, though the 36-year-old has slipped currently to tenth in the world rankings.
Close on his heels at 11th in the world rankings was Wesley So, a 25-year-old Philippines-born American making his Gibraltar debut. And one rating point behind So was twelfth-ranked Yu Yangyi from China whom Atermiev beat in the final round.
‘The 24-year-old has yet to break into the world’s top ten, but it can be only a matter of time,’ says Conquest. ‘He played a lot of team chess in 2018 and the proudest moment would have been when he received a team gold for winning the Olympiad as board two for the Chinese team.’
And there was not only a wide spread of nationalities but of age groups, too.
One of the oldest players Sead Kazarcanin is a 74-year-old from Croatia, and – apart from the Indian 12-year-old grand master – there were two 14-year-old twins from Chile.
Perhaps the most unlikely though were the four Argentines from Patagonia who saw last year’s festival online and decided to make the long journey here this year. Congratulations to Vladimir Artemiev and all the participants and organizers.
