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Hastings is the grandfather of international chess tournaments, first staged in 1895 and then every year since 1920, with breaks for war and pandemics. Its vintage years were the 1930s, 50s and 70s, when world champions and challengers lined up to compete, while the badminton legend Sir George Thomas and the Bletchley Park codebreaker Hugh Alexander both shared first after defeating renowned opponents.
Nowadays, Hastings has publicity problems, sandwiched as it is between the London Classic and Tata Steel Wijk and Zee, and running simultaneously with the Magnus Carlsen show in the World Rapid/Blitz.
Its traditional support from Hastings Borough Council has completely vanished, so that this year’s event lacked any player from the world’s top 200 grandmasters. Hastings had a £10,000 prize fund, compared with £50,000 for the London Classic and €1m for the World Rapid/Blitz in Qatar.
The Sussex seaside resort maintained its reputation for unveiling new talent. Alex Golding, 21, who tied for first by defeating the experienced GM Simon Willliams in the final round, developed his skills in Guildford, who for years were the dominant team in Britain’s national league, the 4NCL, and in Surrey, the current county champions.
Golding was joint winner on 7/9 with Alexander Kovchan, 42, a Ukrainian GM currently resident in London, who leads the Barnet Knights team in the 4NCL. In the decisive final round at Hastings, Kovchan scored in the endgame against 17-year-old German IM Marius Deuer.
The English GMs Stephen Gordon, Williams, and Danny Gormally, all had their moments but lacked the consistency for the top places, as did the talented English juniors Stanley Badacsonyi and Kenneth Hobson whose quests for IM norms continue.
GM Stuart Conquest, director of the Hastings congress, says that plans for its 100th event next year may depend on finding an entirely new sponsor. Hastings Borough Council, which for decades was the principal supporter, progressively reduced its backing in recent years and has now dropped out completely.
The congress will definitely continue in 2025-26, since entry fees from upwards of 200 players will cover the prize fund. However, a sponsor is needed for the venue costs and the special centenary events.
Conquest is considering invitations to previous winners, but it might be more realistic to prioritise the few English grandmasters that are previous Hastings winners. Among these, Nigel Short is the only Englishman to have won twice outright, and 2025 will also be the 50th anniversary of the start of the “English chess explosion” which in the space of a few years transformed the national team into No 2 in the world, surpassed only by the legendary Soviets, and stimulated Short to become Garry Kasparov’s title challenger.
Bodhana Sivananandan, 10, had a solid performance at Hastings with 5.5/9, losing only to GM Gordon, but she was mainly warming up for her principal target, the European Blitz Championship, which is being played on Friday afternoon in Monaco.
Due to her stellar performance there two years ago and her victory in last month’s UK Open Blitz Championship, Sivanandan is seeded as high as ninth. England also fields IM Harriet Hunt and WIM Natasha Regan.
Round 1 (of 13) is scheduled for 12.30pm GMT, and there is live coverage on YouTube.
Fide and Freestyle Chess have agreed that the next Freestyle event, at Weissenhaus, Germany, on 13-15 February, will count as an official Fide Freestyle World Championship. This was a sticking point when negotiations broke down last year.
Both parties gain from this decision: Freestyle acquires legitimacy, while Fide confirms that only it can designate a world championship, and is involved in another event in which Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1 and the chess player with most global brand recognition, will participate.
The field of eight is already almost settled due to qualifiers from the 2025 Freestyle Tour: Carlsen (Norway), Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana and Hans Niemann (all US), Javokhir Sindarov (Uzbekistan), and Vincent Keymer (Germany) with one further qualifier from an online tournament to be played on 15 January on chess.com.
There will also be a new Fide Women’s Freestyle World Championship, to be staged in late 2026 with a $50,000 prize fund.
World championships are now piling up, with the long established Classical crown now rivalled by Rapid, Blitz, Total and Freestyle competitions, in addition to 65+ and 50+ Senior contests, team championships, and World Junior events in all age groups from under-8 to under-20.
4006: 1 Qg5+ Ke6 2 Qg4+ Kf6 (f5? 3 Qg6 mate) 3 Qg7+ Ke6 4 Rg6+ f6 (fxg6? 5 Qxg6 mate) 5 Rxf6+! exf6 6 Qd7 mate.
