Worries that the windowless Willoughby was going to be too warm for five days of tough classical chess necessitates a switch to Kingston University

The current heatwave, which looks like it will continue into next week, has caused the organisers to change the venue for the 1st Kingston Invitational from Kingston Chess Club’s usual venue, the Willoughby Arms in north Kingston, to Kingston University. The upside of the club’s playing room at the Willoughby is that its thick padded walls – rock bands use to practise there – and lack of windows make it soundproof, so ideal for chess. The downside is that it is incredibly stuffy in this weather. Hence the move, a week ahead of the scheduled start of the five-day 10-player all-play-all, which runs from Wednesday 20 July to Sunday 24 July, to the rather airier Room 1119 in the Main Building of the university’s Penrhyn Road campus.

The field for the Fide-rated event remains unchanged:

IM Peter Large [Fide 2299, ECF 2353]
Steven Jones [Fide 2251, ECF 2339]
CM David Henry Maycock Bates [Fide 2240, ECF 2295]
FM Akshaya Kalaiyalahan [Fide 2158, ECF 2212]
NM Peter Lalić [Fide 2151, ECF 2269]
Michael Healey [Fide 2147, ECF 2281]
Timothy Seymour [Fide 2076, ECF 2145]
WCM Zoe Varney [Fide 2045, ECF 2094]
Peter Finn [Fide 2038, ECF 2176]
William Taylor [Fide 1959, ECF 2095]

The tournament controller will be Adam Raoof, working alongside arbiters Mark Hogarth and Angus James. There will be nine games, spread over five days: two games a day on the first four days, with the final game on Sunday. The pairings have already been made available to the participants. Start times of the games from Wednesday to Saturday will be 11am and 4pm. The game on Sunday will also start at 11am. The time control is 90 minutes with a 30-second increment. The prize fund is £250 to the winner, £100 for second, £50 for third. There will be a £50 best game prize, to be judged by Vladimir Li, one of the strongest players at the Kingston club.

Stephen Moss