Here's our video of Thursday's opening reception of the London FIDE Grand Prix tournament. It was held at the Somerset House, on the south side of the Strand in central London, overlooking the Thames, by the embankment, just east of Waterloo Bridge.

Lily Cole vs Veselin Topalov | Photo: Mission PR

The young boy seen in the video is one of the most talented chess kids in the UK at the moment. His coach IM Lorin D'Costa sent us the following report:

The event opened with a blitz game between the players, but a mini event was also held alongside: 8 year old Joshua Altman from England, fresh from his bronze medal in the European Under 8 championships in Prague held back in August, grabbed his opportunity to play a super GM with a 5 minute blitz game against the former world championship challenger, GM Boris Gelfand from Israel.

Josh defied the whopping 2738 rating of his illustrious opponent and gained an advantage in the middlegame, but ended up losing on time. Still, this caught the eye of many and a crowd gathered around Josh as he took on other strong players- GM John Nunn, GM Gawain Jones (whom he was a whisker from holding to a draw) and IM Ali Mortazavi to name a few.

However the real sensation was Josh’s game against GM Luke McShane, rated 2713 and one of Englands top players. Josh even managed to beat Luke with the white pieces! In Lukes defence, he was spending the whole game chatting with GM Gawain Jones, but he did play to some strength. The ironic thing about this is that Luke, now 28 years old, was a famous prodigy himself (indeed winning the world Under 10 title as an 8 year old in Duisburg, Germany, back in 1992) and was famed for beating strong players at a ridiculously young age. Luke was extremely sporting, even allowing me to write this article and shaking Joshs hand and wishing him good luck in his future chess career.

A proud coach, D'Costa also sent us two games. He couldn’t recall the middle of the Altman-McShane game, but he remembered the opening and the finish of the game.

PGN file