Staying the course

After a pause during the pandemic, the Hastings Chess Congress returned for its 96th edition in the days after Christmas, with renewed support from software company Caplin. A newly published book, The Chess Battles of Hastings by Jürgen Brustkern and Norbert Wallet (New in Chess, 2022), offers an enjoyable chronicle of the event’s rich history. Among the vignettes of congress luminaries, one anecdote caught my eye. One year in the 1980s, heavy snowfall caused the heating in the playing hall to fail, to which most players responded with an early draw offer. But grandmaster Murray Chandler persevered for five hours, he and his opponent ‘like two Eskimos, in woollen hats and winter coats’, and became joint winner thanks to his victory.

   I assume that this year’s winner, the Lithuanian grandmaster Sarunas Sulskis, had no quarrel with the elements, but his tournament victory owed much to doggedness at the board. In the second round, he squeezed a 120-move win from the notoriously toilsome endgame of king, rook and bishop against king and rook.