Jonathan Hawkins has emerged as the winner of this year’s British Championship, which finished last week at the University of Warwick in Coventry. Several players were in contention for the laurels as they entered the final round, but Hawkins’s rivals could only draw, and his win clinched the title.
In the past there was a clearly defined cursus honorum for aspiring players. Win the national championship, and the odds were that you would be selected for the World Championship zonal tournament. If you qualified from that stage to the interzonal then the path was clear, if you were successful, to proceed to the Candidates tournament for the world title.
Nowadays, with variegated World Chess Federation qualifying routes, the climb to the top has become more opaque. This goes some way to explaining why, since sharing the British Championship with David Howell last year, Hawkins appears to have made no impact on the international stage. After his latest victory, I hope and expect that this highly talented player will emerge into the international arena to make his mark there as well as in purely national competitions.
Hawkins-Hill, British Championship, Coventry 2015; Grünfeld Defence
1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 g6 3 Nc3 d5 4 Nf3 Bg7 5 h4 Enterprising but not new. The primary highways of the Grünfeld are introduced by 5 cxd5 and 5 Bg5. 5 … c6 6 Bg5 dxc4 Perhaps this voracity is out of place. 6 … Ne4 is more in the spirit of the Grünfeld. As played, Black’s greed gives White’s h4 an immediate relevance. 7 e4 b5 8 e5 Nd5 9 h5 (see diagram 1) 9 … Bg4 The critical line in what has become a gambit scenario is to challenge White’s bishop with 9 … h6.
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