British Chess Championships

This year’s British Chess Championships was held at Hull City Hall and the DoubleTree by Hilton in Hull City Centre, with events running from Thursday 25th July to Sunday 4th August 2024 across the two city centre venues.

2024 British Chess Champions

ECF CEO Mike Truran with GM Gawain Jones, and Hull Councillor Pritchard with GM David Howell

Congratulations to the 2024 British Chess Champion GM Gawain Jones, who became the latest champion following Sunday’s exciting playoff against second placed GM David Howell!

Gawain and David agreed a draw in their round 9 game with both players finishing on 7 points, which was half a point clear of the following pack and resulted in a playoff for the title. The playoff was all square after two rapidplay games, with Gawain then winning the blitz games by 1½ – ½ to take the 2024 Championship.

Congratulations also go to joint British Women’s Champions WGM Lan Yao and WIM Trisha Kanyamarala.

WGM Lan Yao, and WGM Lan Yao and WIM Trisha Kanyamarala

Congratulations also go to highest placed juniors in the main British Championship as follows:

Highest placed U21 – FM Maciej Czopor

Joint Highest placed U18 – IMs Shreyas Royal, Svyatoslav Bazakutsa, Artem Lutsko, and Yichen Han

Highest placed U18 Girl – WFM Bodhana Sivanandan

We are pleased to confirm that were two GM norms awarded at the event. One for for IM Shreyas Royal (below right) who is now set to become England’s youngest ever GM, and one for IM Matthew Wadsworth (below left) on his second GM norm.

The Senior Championship titles were won by GM Keith Arkell, who becomes the 50+ British Champion, and FM Andrew Smith, who becomes the 65+ British Champion.

Junior British Champions are shown in this table —

	U16	U14	U12	U10	U8
Standardplay	Max Pert	Rock Yu	George Zhao	Junyi Zhang	Junyan Hu
Rapidplay	Stanley Badacsonyi	Pengxiao Zhu	George Zhao/Rami Talab	Dildarav Lishoy Gengis Paratzham	Tara Tamilselvan
Blitz	Stanley Badacsonyi/Jack Liu	Pengxiao Zhu	George Zhao	Junyi Zhang/Dildarav Lishoy Gengis Paratzham	Advik Saxena/Tara Tamilselvan

You can find the list of prizewinners for all of the British events at https://www.britishchesschampionships.co.uk/prizewinners-2024/

The ECF would like to thank our sponsors the Hull and East Riding Chess Association, Hull City Council, Hull Culture and Leisure, Visit Hull and East Yorkshire, the Chess Trust and the John Robinson Youth Chess Trust, arbiters, officials, commentators and all of the players who took part in in the events … and of course parents who accompanied their juniors. We would also like to thank the Department for Culture Media and Sport for their support in making this one of the strongest British Championships in the last twenty years.

Simul with Keith Arkell – report and pictures here

Junior Simul with Keith Arkell – report and pictures here

Playing Schedule

This year’s Championships schedule is shown in the table below —