European Prison Chess Championships

The 2nd Continental Online Prison Chess Championships for Europe took place recently. Forty five prisons from Norway to Armenia entered and there was an excellent showing from the three England teams.

HMP/YOI Isis represented England in the Youth event and were runners-up. The team was undefeated and were just pipped by Serbia in the final round. HMP Bronzefield were third in the Women's event. They went into the final round knowing that a 4-0 victory over Romania would take the title but just couldn't achieve it; Georgia well-deserved the title. HMP Wandsworth were equal 6th out of 32 in the Open. They had the toughest of starts against the defending champions, Serbia, but then grew in confidence and finished strongly with four wins and a draw, including wins against Greece, Latvia, Ireland and Czechia.

While this is a team event with a great sense of camaraderie, it’s worth highlighting some outstanding individual performances. One of the Isis team scored 100%, a Bronzefield player won six games and drew one and a Wandsworth player put in the strongest performance on his board with five wins and a draw.

These events take a lot of planning and organisation, from clearance for online access to arranging lunch. We really appreciate the efforts of the officers at Isis, Bronzefield and Wandsworth who go out of their way to make it possible for us to represent England in this competition. Our huge thanks to the CSC team for their hard work running weekly clubs at each of these prisons - it’s great to see such results. Our Prisons Programme is expanding. If you would like to volunteer to support this work, please contact us here.