By the time this article appears, the London Classic at Olympia and the newly created brainchild of the indefatigable Malcolm Pein, the introduction of the British Knockout Championship, will have been underway for some time. The prize fund in the Classic is $300,000, this being part of the new global Grand Chess Tour which has tournaments in St Louis and Norway, where the overall prize fund available amounts to over $1,000,000.
Given the lavish support for these two events, a recent article in the Guardian by Stephen Moss entitled ‘Grandmaster Crash — How English Chess Pawned Its Future’deserves attention. While criticising the English Chess Federation for frittering its energies on internecine feuds, Moss rightly lauds Malcolm Pein, who has made great efforts on behalf of British chess both at elite international level and with grassroots charitable activities (chessinschools.co.uk).
The extracts this week see players from the main event in action.
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