Seagulls But No Hastings

SEAGULLS are not an everyday sight or sound in London, but when I hear them cawing overhead in December it reminds me of Hastings.

Today should have seen the start of the 100th Hastings international chess congress (the 96th to have been held over the New Year).

That has been cancelled, so the question now is: will it be held over the 2021-22 New Year?

A few weeks ago I would have had few doubts about that. Indeed I suspect many people expect things to get back to normal by the spring, or at least by the summer, even if it is a 'new normal'.

But on December 23, health secretary Matt Hancock was reported on the BBC as throwing a massive dampener on such hopes:

The last question comes from Arj Singh from HuffPost. He asks if, given the highly-transmissible new variant, the government is guilty of overpromising by suggesting the UK can return to normality by Easter. Hancock replies that he is "highly confident we will get things back to normal before 2022"

So it is far from certain Hastings will be held next year, and I fear even the British championships, scheduled for Torquay from July 23 - August 1, are far from a shoo-in.

I expect tournaments in Europe will have resumed in many countries before then, but the only certainty these days is uncertainty.

Hastings 1895: (l-r rear) Albin, Schlechter, Janowski, Marco, Blackburne, Maróczy, Schiffers, Gunsberg, Burn, Tinsley, (l-r front) Vergani, Steinitz, Chigorin, Lasker, Pillsbury, Tarrasch, Mieses, Teichmann (absent: Bird, Mason, von Bardeleben, Walbrodt). Source: Wikipedia