Thursday 31st July saw the start of competitions in the 2025 “British”, though for a number of days before that people must have been setting out sets, boards and clocks, erecting noticeboards and making the rest of the necessary preparations.

Accordingly, on the evening of day 1 (31st July), the 9-round under-16, -14, -12, -10 and -8 Blitz Championships took place, allegedly with live commentary by Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan on the ECF YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@EnglishChessFederation, though such commentary had not been uploaded yet at the time of writing. For games and result tables see links to sections on https://www.britishchesschampionships.co.uk/bcc-2025-where-to-follow-the-games/. The winners in each section seem all to hail from the London area.

The 9-round under-16, -14, -12, -10 and -8 Rapidplay Championships were to place on day 2 (1st August) for rounds 1 to 6, and on day 3 (2nd August) for rounds 7 to 9. Winners were a little more geographically dispersed. Though mainly from the South East, there was a winner from Warwickshire and a winner from Buckinghamshire.

Meanwhile, day 2 was to be the start of the 5-ro at und 3-day weekend congresses held at the Holiday Inn. Although there is no live coverage of games in play, progress can be followed on Chess-results.com https://s3.chess-results.com/tnrWZ.aspx?lan=1&SNode=S0&tno=1213123.

The standard-rate championships were not to start until day 3 (2nd August) with round 1 of the British Championship proper (for which participants have to qualify one way or another) and the Major Open both being scheduled for the Saturday afternoon.

If you are a glutton for punishment, you can enter carefully selected events so that you have a game virtually each morning and each afternoon. Thus, for instance, you could enter the Major Open and the AM Open, so filling every afternoon from Saturday 2nd August to Sunday 10th August and all mornings between them except the morning of Sunday 10th which would provide an opportunity for sightseeing.