Over a period of 6 days, Sheffield saw two “international” events running side by side at the Hampton by Hilton hotel, West Bar Green, Sheffield S1 2DA, run by Jonathan Arnott, with Phil Beckett serving as an arbiter.

1) Gawain Maroroa Jones v Szymon Gumularz

What was billed (after consultation with this webmaster!) as the strongest match ever played in Sheffield was a match between Sheffield-resident GM Gawain Maroroa Jones and Szymon Gumularz, the current Polish Champion. This was for both intended as preparation for when they represent their respective countries in the Olympiad to be held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan from 15th to 27th September 2026 – see ECF website here and FIDE website here. This preparatory nature meant that, as part of the terms of sponsorship, games could not be published. Inter alia, this was a chance for 38-year-old Gawain Jones to experience what it is like to be thrashed by an up-and-coming junior, Gumularz having been born in 2001.

The match was in three phases. First was a 10-game blitz match, which, unlike the rest of the match, was played at the Sheffield Chess Centre before an audience on Sunday 5th July. Second was an 8-game standard rate match played behind closed doors at the Hilton form Monday to Thursday 6th to 9th July. Third was a 4-game rapidplay match played at the Hilton on Friday 19th July.

Overall scoring gave weightings to each of the they phases’ scores: x 1 for the blitz, x 4 for the standard rate, and x 2 for the rapidplay. Published weighted scoring was as follows:

	Gawain Jones	Szymon Gumularz
Blitz	2	6
Standard	6	10
Rapid	6	2
Total	14	18

In is of little consequence, but the above Blitz scoring above is at variance with the game-by-game results (https://sheffieldchesscentre.co.uk/sheffield-international):

#	White	Result	Black
1	Gumularz	1–0	Jones
2	Jones	½–½	Gumularz
3	Gumularz	0-1	Jones
4	Jones	0–1	Gumularz
5	Gumularz	1–0	Jones
6	Jones	0-1	Gumularz
7	Gumularz	½–½	Jones
8	Jones	0–1	Gumularz

Thus GM Szymon Gumularz won this Sheffield International 18-14.

2) Sheffield Round-Robin IM Norm Event

This took place from the Monday 6th to Friday 10th of July at the Hilton.

Events of this type are aimed at giving up-and-coming players, usually juniors, to achieve “norms” for a FIDE International Master (IM) title. These norm-seekers will in some cases already have FM or CM titles which titles are of non-international status. The participants necessarily include players already with titles of international status such as IM, or even GM. At least a third of the participants in this event needed to be IMs or GMs. Non-internationally titles aspirants are thus being measured up against players already with international-status titles (named in bold below).

There were 10 players in total, playing one game against each other player.

Place	Title	Name	FED	Rtg	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Pts.
1		Sam Chow	AUS	2358	*	½	1	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	6½
2	FM	Supratit Banerjee	ENG	2342	½	*	½	1	½	1	1	0	1	1	6½
3	FM	Vojtech Zwardon	CZE	2425	0	½	*	½	½	1	0	1	½	1	5
4	IM	Tarun Kanyamarala	IRL	2435	0	0	½	*	1	½	1	1	0	1	5
5	IM	Owen Crawford	ENG	2174	1	½	½	0	*	0	0	½	1	1	4½
6		Trisha Kanyamarala	IRL	2178	0	0	0	½	1	*	1	0	1	1	4½
7	WGM	Oleg Verbytski	ENG	2273	0	0	1	0	1	0	*	1	0	1	4
8		Jacob D Yoon	ENG	2259	0	1	0	0	½	1	0	*	½	½	3½
9	CM	Gediminas Sarakauskas	LTU	2310	0	0	½	1	0	0	1	½	*	0	3
10	IM	Avadhoot Lokesh Brahme	IND	2183	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	½	1	*	2½

In this event, currently untitled Sam Chow, who plays for White Rose 4NCL, secured an IM norm, and Supratit Banerjee of Coulsdon chess club, who is already a FIDE master, also secured an IM norm. (The required performance to achieve a norm can be found on the FIDE website at https://doc.fide.com/docs/DOC/3FC2023/FC3_2023_26.pdf.)

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Jonathan Arnott’s detailed report on all the above with numerous photographs can be read at https://sheffieldchesscentre.co.uk/sheffield-international.

A BBC report, which has some understandable slight inaccuracies, can be read at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0ly5dd18ego.