The British Chess Championships 2025 were held at Liverpool’s St George’s Hall and the Holiday Inn next door to it, The 30+ events were covered from 31/07/25 – 10/08/25 and here are daily reports.
The main championship was being defended by last years winner Gawain Jones with company from the other top two seeds at the English Championship: Nikita Vitiugov and Mickey Adams. Two thirds of the pack of 100 participants had a title, 14 of those being GM’s including Stuart Conquest, Daniel Fernandez and Stephen Gordon.
As has been the way in recent times, juniors featured large in the competition and performed extremely well. Interestingly, only one of the above top three seeds remained in the leading group a third of the way through; giving some indication of the strength of the chasing pack.
By the mid-way point, Mickey Adams had secured a half point lead with three more rounds to go – there was little room for error. A highlight of round 7 was a near on 5 hour marathon between Ameet Ghasi and Supratit Banerjee that ended with them agreeing on a draw. Banaree who is 11 years old and a former Scottish junior but he has now moved to London, scored an IM norm and the round previous (round 6) beat GM Simon Williams
It was an extremely tight conclusion in the last round with a three-way tie for first place, not seen in the British since 1986: Peter Roberson, Mickey Adams and Stuart Conquest. The eventual play off final being between Stuart Conquest vs Mickey Adams. Mickey (53) went on to win both matches to secure his 9th title having faced six GM’s in the nine rounds with a 7/9 performance. One of the highlights of his nine rounds was against 16 year old English GM, Shreyas Royal, one to watch for the future.
Next year’s, 112th event is being held at Coventry, 1-9 August 2026, having hosted the event 11 years previous in 2015.
