This will be an important month for global chess, with the Total World Championship pilot, combining fast classical, rapid and blitz segments due in Budapest from 10-20 November. This will be followed by the Gukesh Dommaraju v Javokhir Sindarov Salesforce Fide World Championship match in Geneva between 24 November and 12 December, featuring 14 games of classical chess followed, if needed, by rapid and blitz tiebreaks.
The traditional London Classic at the Novotel West in Hammersmith will also start on 24 November and will continue until 7 December.
The world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, will be the top seed and favourite for Total Chess and the Norwegian, 35, will be taking it more seriously than any event since he defended his world classical title in 2021.
Photographs on chess.com show Carlsen analysing at a training camp in Spain with his training partner and world No 5, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, his friend and top commentator David Howell, his longtime coach, Peter Heine Nielsen, and his baby son, whose name has not been officially revealed but is believed to be Marcus. Abdusattorov is the overwhelming favourite in London, so Carlsen can be comfortable about sharing his opening secrets with the Uzbek.
Meanwhile Sindarov, the challenger, delivered a spectacular performance at Saint Louis in his last-round game before the world title contest in Geneva, winning a major brilliancy against the world No 2, Hikaru Nakamura, and then explaining it vividly to his interviewer, Maurice Ashley.
Sindarov finished first in a quadrangular rapid tournament against Nakamura and the world Nos 3 and 7, Fabiano Caruana and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu. He did it in style, coming from behind to win with fearless tactical play.
The interview is almost as impressive as the game, as Sindarov, in excellent English, states that his Bxg4!! sacrifice is typical of the King’s Indian Defence. I was reminded of how the King’s Indian specialist David Bronstein used to explain his brilliancies with a torrent of words and gestures, and Sindarov’s concept is as good as any KID produced by the great Soviet player. The Uzbek grandmaster also included some graceful comments for the organisers, again with notable verbal clarity.
GM Gawain Maroroa Jones won the English Championship for a fourth time at Peterborough last week, after his rival IM Jonah Willow, who had led by half a point after six of the nine rounds, blundered in a winning position against Jones in round seven.
Final leading scores were Jones 7.5/9, GM Michael Adams, IM Brandon Clarke and GM Danny Gormally 6.5, IM Willow and six others 6.
Jones also won the English Blitz Championship, played last Sunday as a 15-round Swiss. He scored 12/15, ahead of Livio Cancedda-Dupuis 11 and GM Ameet Ghasi 10.5. Earlier, IM Marcus Harvey won the English Rapid Championship, defeating IM Willow in a tie-break.
Jones will hope to continue his good form in the London Classic, where other names to watch are India’s Nihal Sarin, 22, who has just entered the world top 20 on the November Fide rating list, the US talent Andy Woodward, 16, who defeated Caruana at the recent US championship, and Ukraine’s Ihor Samunenkov, 17, who won an individual gold at the 2026 Olympiad. It will still be a major shock if Abdusattorov fails to claim the £50,000 first prize.
Entries to the English Championship were disappointing, in particular from older players and women, suggesting that high entry fees for untitled players coupled with high hotel costs are having a negative effect. The event also overlapped with Scarborough, which is one of the most popular weekend congresses.
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England’s No 3 junior, Sohum Lohia, 17, is in search of his first GM norm. He has begun with 4/5 in the Bavarian Open at Tegernsee, Germany, including this elegant 17-move miniature with the black pieces. Lohia’s two draws have both been against highly rated grandmasters, so that he was well placed for the norm.
GM Keith Arkell, who raised £3,000 towards his expenses by a GoFundMe appeal, is the No 9 seed in the World Over-65 Championship now in progress at Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia. At 65, Arkell became the oldest player in history to go 100 consecutive Fide-rated games without defeat. After two rounds, he shared the lead with 30 others on 2/2.
Lohia and Arkell produced further strong performances in Thursday’s round. Lohia drew comfortably with GM Nijat Abasov of Azerbaijan, a former world title candidate, to take his total to 3.5/5, while Arkell confidently outplayed Serbian GM Dusan Rajkovic and won a 24-move miniature.
Lohia is now ahead of schedule for a GM norm, while Arkell shares the lead on 3/3 with just six others instead of 30, and is in the silver medal position on tiebreak.
Bernard Cafferty, who has died aged 92, was a longtime British Chess Magazine editor who translated Alexander Kotov’s bestseller Think like a Grandmaster into English, He was British Lightning Champion a record four times in succession, and runner-up in the 1964 British Championship. Cafferty also seconded Tony Miles when England’s first GM won the World Junior title in 1974.
4049: 1 Rc1! Qxa6 2 Rxc4! bxc4 3 Qh3! and the c7 pawn queens. The trap is 1 Rd8? Qxa6 2 c8=Q Qa1+ 3 Kg2 Qf1 mate.
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