Boy the home office tried to deport at 9 wins British chess championship at 17

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Shreyas Royal today won the British chess championship aged only 17. By my calculation that makes him the youngest holder of the title - he breaks Michael Adams's record by a couple of months, just as he broke David Howell's record to become Britain's youngest ever grandmaster at 15.

I first wrote about Shreyas in 2018, under the headline

The government is forcing Britain's best chess prospect to leave the country

There I said:

Nine-year-old Shreyas Royal has variously been described as “the greatest British chess prospect in a generation” (Malcolm Pein) and "the best prospect the country has ever seen" (Chris Ward).

But, reports the Guardian:

Shreyas Royal has lived in the UK since he was three but has been told he will be sent back to India when his father’s work visa expires in September.  

The home office soon relented, and all the claims made for Shreyas then turn out to have been justified.

Sadly he won't play for England at the forthcoming chess olympiad. The selectors went all Bazball and named their team of five early, at a time when Shreyas's form did not make him a certain pick, and he was one of the players who missed out.

But he looks certain to establish himself as Britain's strongest player within a year or two, unless one of the many talented juniors now coming through overtakes him before then.

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.

ChessFest draws 23,000 people to Trafalgar Square

Starring nine-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan, who's just been selected for the England women's team, the annual ChessFest event attracted 23,000 people to Trafalgar Square on Sunday. That's an increase of 8000 over last year.

The English Chess Federation site says:

Bodhana was joined by a host of top UK grandmasters and three other young English super-talents: 15-year-old Shreyas Royal, who is on the brink of becoming England’s youngest ever grandmaster, fast-rising under 10 Supratit Banerjee and Ethan Pang, the world’s number-one under-9 player.

British Champion Gawain Jones and England’s number-one Nikita Vitiugov, both world-class grandmasters, treated the crowd to a display of blindfold chess. There was also an appearance from Anthony Mathurin, from the BBC show The Traitors, who is a chess coach.

The festival, now in its fourth year, drew chess enthusiasts from across the country, including many of the country’s top grandmasters, for a day of fun suitable for every level of player. 

It was organised by the charity Chess in Schools and Communities (CSC) with support from the Mayor of London and XTX Markets.

With an upsurge of interest in chess - attributed to The Queen's Gambit television series and to people rediscovering the game online during lockdown - and a crop of outstanding junior players, it looks as though Britain is heading to the top again. In the 1990s we were second as a chess power only to the old Soviet Union.

Malcolm Pein, chief executive of CSC, said:

"It was wonderful to see over 23,000 people enjoying what is the Glastonbury of chess in Trafalgar Square. A mid-afternoon downpour did not stop play, unlike the cricket!"

The photographs here were taken by Andrew Moss and are used with his permission and that of Malcolm Pein, chief executive of Chess in Schools and Communities.

Shreyas Royal, 13, breaks British record for youngest ever grandmaster result

Photo: English Chess Federation  

Some good news for a change. At the age of 13 Shreyas Royal has broken the British record for the youngest ever grandmaster performance. 

On Sunday he completed a score of seven points from nine games in the €15,000 Bavarian Open at Tegernsee, Germany. He won six games, drew two and lost only to the top seeded player, the four-time champion of Ukraine Anton Korobov.

As Leonard Barden explains in the Financial Times:

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, England was briefly the No2 chess nation behind the former Soviet Union, but the golden generation grew old and there has been no new English player in the world top 100 since Howell and Gawain Jones emerged in the late 1990s. Royal has just shown that he has the potential to change that.

More immediately, he has a serious chance to score two further norms and complete the requirements for GM before his 15th birthday in January 2024. That would place him among the select group of 40 grandmasters who have earned the title at age 14 or younger. A glance at the list shows that many of them are among the current stars of world chess.

Four years ago I blogged about the struggle of Shreyas Royal's family to stay in the UK.

Shreyas Royal can stay in the UK

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Good news from the Guardian:

A nine-year-old chess prodigy has been told he does not have to leave the UK when his father’s work visa expires, a move that has been welcomed by MPs and chess organisations in Britain.

Shreyas Royal has lived in the UK since he was three but was told he would be sent back to India when the work visa expires in September. 

On Friday, his father, Jitendra Singh, said he had received an email that morning, informing him of the Home Office’s change of mind. 

"They just emailed me and told me they had considered my case and we are allowed to extend our leave to remain on tier 2 general route," Singh said. 

"We are very happy and Shreyas is very happy. He jumped up on the sofa when he heard the news. I want to thank all those who helped and supported us ... I would also like to thank the Home Office and the home secretary who considered our case." 

I blogged about this case last week.

Of course not everyone who wants to stay in Britain is the parent of a budding genius, and I hope this affair will not add to the pressure on Shreyas.

But if it shows people how hard it is for people to settle in Britain and reminds them that immigration is not a universally negative phenomenon, then fighting to overturn the original decision will have been worthwhile.

The government is forcing Britain's best chess prospect to leave the country

Nine-year-old Shreyas Royal has variously been described as “the greatest British chess prospect in a generation” (Malcolm Pein) and "the best prospect the country has ever seen" (Chris Ward).

But, reports the Guardian:

Shreyas Royal has lived in the UK since he was three but has been told he will be sent back to India when his father’s work visa expires in September. 

His parents, Jitendra and Anju Singh, moved to south-east London from India in 2012. They have been staying under a tier 2 long-term work permit. The only way Shreyas's father would be eligible to renew his visa would be to earn more than £120,000 a year, which he does not. 

The couple appealed to the Home Office on the grounds that Shreyas is a national asset, but received a letter this week saying that while the nine-year-old showed "immense promise" it did not mean he could remain in the country. 

"I was not expecting that kind of response," said his father. "[The Home Office] have a rule to allow exceptional talent here. They need people like my son in the UK."

We certainly do.

Here is Leonard Barden writing in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago:

Fide, the global body, ranks England as the No 12 chess nation. This is due to a long-standing sextet of GMs rated 2650+ and ranked in the world top 100 – Michael Adams, Nigel Short, Luke McShane, Matthew Sadler, [Gawain] Jones and [David] Howell. Short is 53 and Adams 46, while Howell at 27 is the youngest, so the seeds for future decline are obvious. 

A current thread on the English Chess Forum www.ecforum.org.uk asks: "Who is our next Adams?" The answer at the moment seems to be "Nobody". 

This is just one more example of the way the Conservatives' obsession with immigration is diminishing Britain.

The good news is that two Labour MPs - Rachel Reeves, a former junior chess champion herself, and Matthew Pennycook, who represents Greenwich and Woolwich where Shreyas lives - have taken up his case.