Chancellor announces £1.5m fund for Britain's elite chess players

Rishi Sunak established a £500,000 fund to support Britain's elite chess players when he was prime minister. The new Labour government scrapped it.

But now Rachel Reeves – a former  British under-14 girls champion herself – has announced that a larger sum is earmarked for the same purpose.

Leonard Barden, in his Guardian column, quotes her as saying:

“We are allocating £1.5m to help identify, support and elevate top tier players who have the potential to compete at a global level.”

And he explains:

The new support, announced along with a £500m grant for youth service projects, is more precisely targeted to the best talents, and will act as a spur to players like England’s youngest grandmaster, Shreyas Royal, 16, and England’s youngest Olympiad player, Bodhana Sivanandan, 10, both of whom met the chancellor a few weeks ago at 11 Downing Street. 

Currently the best prospect relative to age is Supratit Banerjee, 11, who played on top board for the Surrey team which retained the inter-counties championship this month and made a creditable draw with England’s No 2, David Howell, in a clock simultaneous match last week. The Scot, Frederick Gordon, 15, has also impressed. 

Barden goes on to cite similar schemes that proved successful in England, the US and the old Soviet Union.

One feature of Rishi Sunak's package for chess isn't being revived: the money he gave for chess tables in parks.

It was always hard to see why this was a matter for central government, but the plan – like the teaching of Latin in state schools – was attacked out of both snobbery and inverse snobbery.