Interest in English one-day blitz tournaments is growing rapidly. They offer the chance to compete in officially ranked events with many rounds without the financial pressures of overnight accommodation, and give amateurs and juniors a rare chance to take on established masters, with a chance of an upset result.
This year the English Chess Federation has doubled the number of qualifying events for the UK Blitz Championship, whose final is at Leamington in November, from eight to 16, and organised three qualifiers in Greater London rather than just one. All three tournaments, in Hampton, Harrow and Golders Green, were well attended, especially the last, staged last Saturday.
Blitz is three minutes per player per game, plus a two seconds per move increment.
Golders Green attracted a strong entry of grandmasters and international masters, headed by the former world semi-finalist Jonathan Speelman and England’s youngest ever GM Shreyas Royal, 16, who were expected to provide high-class competition among themselves for the single qualifying place. Instead, there was almost a shock result as a little-known teenager downed several GMs and IMs and missed qualifying by just half a point.
Kai Hanache, 13, a pupil at the Charles De Gaulle Lycée in Kensington, London, defeated three grandmasters and three international masters, and also set a rating record at the 15-round UK Blitz qualifier. His result was totally unexpected, as his only notable previous blitz achievement was his silver medal in the World Under-10 Blitz in 2022.
Hanache’s rating at the start was a modest 2037, strong amateur level, but he won against three grandmasters, including last month’s British Championship runner-up Stuart Conquest, for a tournament performance of 2448, international master standard.
Conquest explained to the Guardian: “I’d only decided to play the tournament the night before, and the first round was already a cold shower, the single draw in the whole of that round after I was stone-cold winning. In round two, I hung a whole rook. After that, I gradually worked my way up the boards.
“In the game with Kai, I made up 4…h6 at the board. His h4-h5 was a standard plan, a K-side cramp and asking what I’m doing. I floundered with 8…Rc8, but it’s a move I used against Peter Roberson in our British Championship tie-break match in a similar position.
“I had a bad feeling about 23…f6 later, and I was uncomfortable, nothing to do but be patient.
“After it he made his moves quickly and purposefully, and the outcome was soon clear, especially since I had not a glimmer of counterplay.
“He was most unlucky not to get the qualifying spot, as Lorin D’Costa was busted on the next board before recovering. I hadn’t even come across Kai’s name until now, but he struck me as being well mannered and we had a brief chat after the game.”
There could have been a fourth GM victim, but Hanache agreed a draw with Eldar Gasanov, the 2023 and 2024 UK Open Blitz champion, when a clear pawn up.
His blitz rating gain from this single event on Fide’s October list due out early next week is expected to be a whopping 291 points, easily breaking the record single tournament gain by a 2000+ player of 188 points set by India’s Aaditya Dhingra in Serbia in 2023. England’s Bodhana Sivanandan gained 328 points from a single event in 2022, but that was from a much lower starting base.
At his previous event, the Fide world rapid/blitz teams in London in June, Hanache’s blitz performance was subpar, but he scored 6/9 in rapid to help Hammersmith win a team award. He has an hour’s coaching a week from a Russian GM.
Hanache’s scorecard below shows that he met very strong opposition, including 10 of the top 11 seeds. He was leading the entire field of 125 at halfway with 7.5/8, before his only two defeats, one of them to IM D’Costa, who qualified for November’s final in third place.
D’Costa achieved victory in the final round, thus eliminating Hanache from qualification, by recovering from a lost position, then winning the difficult theoretically drawn endgame of rook and bishop against rook. The top two finishers, GM Shreyas Royal and the blitz specialist FM Stanley Badacsonyi, both 16-year-olds, were already qualified from previous events. Final leading scores were Royal 12.5/15, Badacsonyi and D’Costa 12, Hanache 11.5.
Outlier quantum jumps like this often involve slices of luck such as rivals blundering, but Hanache simply outplayed his opponents. Apart from the impressive game against Conquest, his most convincing victory was as Black against the Canadian IM and No 5 seed Jonathan Tayar in round seven, in which he overwhelmed his opponent’s back rank.
Eugenia Karas, the rising talent from St Paul’s Girls School whose favourite opening is 1 Nf3 and 2 b3, qualified as top woman with 8.5, edging out the veteran WGM Sheila Jackson on 8.
There are still four UK Blitz qualifiers to come this weekend, at Birmingham on Saturday and at Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester on Sunday, Entries are accepted until 6pm on the previous day. Online entry is available here, entries to date can be viewed here, while dates and venues of future qualifiers are here.
3991 1…Nxg3+! 2 hxg3 Rh4+! 3 gxh4 Qh2 mate. Instead 2 Kg1 Bd4+ 3 Be3 Bxe3+ 4 Rf2 Qxf2 mate survives a move longer.
