The annual Christmas holiday tournament held in the Sussex town of Hastings, England, may have peaked a little early, but it’s still been a reliable producer of top-flight chess in the 125 years since its unforgettable opening act.
The storied Hastings Tournament of 1895, sensationally won by unheralded American entry Harry Nelson Pillsbury over a field that included Emanuel Lasker, Siegbert Tarrasch, Mikhail Chigorin, Wilhelm Steinitz, Isidor Gunsberg and Carl Schlechter, is widely considered one of the great round-robin clashes in the history of the game. A quarter-century later, British organizers began staging elite annual international chess “congresses” at the seaside resort, alongside large open tournaments and amateur events.