It was as big a night as we’ve ever held with 12 International Masters, five Grandmaster and a host of well-known faces in the chess world at the club.
Dare I say it, it was even more exciting than the World Chess Championship taking place up in Holborn right now.
Ok, perhaps not. But there was, at least, a result rather than eight straight draws…
London’s biggest World Chess Championship satellite event so far was held at Battersea in partnership with chess learning site Chessable.
There was a bumper £700 prize fund put up by Chessable and around 150 people in the room made up of mostly invited VIPs, Battersea members and Chessable members.
John donates his prize
Fittingly, Chessable co-founder IM John Bartholomew won the night scooping top prize after beating IM Kostya Kavutskiy in the final.
Afterward, John kindly donated his winnings to the club.
John said: “Chessable would like to thank the fine members and arbiters of Battersea Chess Club.
“They welcomed approximately 150 chess players to their club for our November 21 Chessable event, and without their help the event likely wouldn’t have taken place.
“We greatly appreciate their support of our events these past few years, and we look forward to future events at London’s oldest continually-operating chess club.”
That was quite a feat as there were some big names in the line-up.
It reads like a who’s who of English chess and YouTube personalities.
GM David Howell, a friend of Battersea and former British champion, and the Russian GM Alexander Chernaiev were top seeds.
The wonderful GM Simon Williams, aka the Ginger GM, GM Alex Colovic and the English GM Stephen Gordon were also in the mix along with the popular streamer IM Eric Rosen.
We also had Argentine Chess Olympiad player WIM Ayelén Martínez, who won the top women’s prize of £100.
IM Kavutskiy finished second while GM David Howell and IM Bogdan Vioreanu finished joint-third.
In total, there were five GMs and 12 IMs taking part in the event, held on a World Chess Championship match rest day. In no particular order, these included:
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- IM Christof Sielecki, aka ChessExplained
- IM Sophie Milliet
- IM Mike Basman, the legend of English chess
- IM Tom Rendle
- IM Peter Roberson
- IM Bogdan Vioreanu
- IM Richard Bates
- IM Gavin Wall
- IM Alex Lopez
Several names from the chess media also featured, including chess.com’s Peter Doggers, the Norwegian journalist Tarjei Svensen and the photographer and “The Thinkers” author David Llada.
