10th London Chess Classic

The 2018 London Chess Classic hit a significant landmark, as it was the 10th edition of the famous series.

This year’s Classic was a great success as we continued to grow in many areas. Four London venues were utilised this time: Olympia, Google HQ, The Irish Cultural Centre and Novotel (West).

Four of the world’s top players took centre stage to contest the finale of the 2018 Grand Chess Tour. Hikaru Nakamura emerged as the champion, followed by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Fabiano Caruana and Levon Aronian.

The British KO Championship took place alongside the Grand Chess Tour games and Gawain Jones (a former Teessider) was the worthy winner.

As usual with the London Chess Classic, the superstars merely represented the tip of a multi-faceted iceberg of a chess festival. We had a big FIDE Open, numerous spectacular junior events at both Olympia and Google HQ, the annual CSC Tutor Conference, the 6th London Chess Conference, three CSC Tutor Training Days and numerous other events, details of which can be found in the official website.

I will be summing up the action over the course of the next few blog posts as I think of and assess my own involvement across a myriad of special Classic events.