Three consecutive British Championship titles for David Hodge: 2023, 2024, and now 2025. The title is for chess solving. The Winton British Chess Solving Championship is held annually – this year and last at the splendid site of Harrow School. The competition, on February 15th, was generously sponsored by Winton, the quantitative investment management firm.
David was comfortably ahead of the chasing field, even though it included Professor Jonathan Mestel who has won the title more often than anyone and this year came second. David and Jonathan were both members of the British team that won the World Chess Solving Championship in July. Third place was a very familiar name in over-the-board chess, one of Britain’s leading otb Grandmasters, Luke McShane. Luke has not previously taken part in a major solving tourney, so his result is especially impressive. Fourth was another relative newcomer to solving chess, Audrey Kueh, and fifth a stalwart and double previous winner, Colin McNab.
An Open event is held at the same time, and competitors in it have to solve the same chess problems as those in the British Championship. Eddy van Beers of Belgium won, as he had done in 2024. No surprise, as he is one of the strongest solvers in the world and was ratings favourite. The oldest competitor at Harrow was Oliver Penrose, brother of the late Jonathan Penrose who was one of Britain’s finest-ever over-the-board players. Oliver solved well and is 95 years old. The ages of the competitors at Harrow spanned more than seven decades! Chess solving is truly for all ages.
In chess solving events, competitors try to solve chess problems, such as White to play and force mate in three moves, against the clock. Points are awarded for how much of the solution the solver finds. You can find all the problems on this site (and you can publish them too): https://solving.wfcc.ch/wsc/2024-2025/info.html
At the same time as the Championship and the Open, a Minor tourney was held and used slightly easier problems; if you would like to try these problems, you can find them at https://solving.wfcc.ch/tourneys/2025/other-rst-2025.html
More information is available from Ian Watson (ian@irwatson.uk). Photograph by Dr John Upham – https://johnupham.smugmug.com/Chess