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Tournament: 144th Varsity Match • Venue: RAC, Pall Mall, London • Date: 7 March 2026
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Monday March 9, 2026 8:33 AM
John Saunders reports: The 144th Varsity Chess Match between Oxford University and Cambridge University was held at the Royal Automobile Club, Pall Mall, London on 7 March 2026. The match sponsors were the Royal Automobile Club. The chief match arbiter was IA Matthew Carr, with assistant arbiter FA Jo Wildman. Oxford won the toss and chose Black on the odd boards. Time control: 40 moves / 2 hours, then all moves / 1 hour - no increment.
| 2025« 2026 Varsity Chess Match »2027 | |||||||
| Bd | Oxford University | Rating | Fed | 2026 | Cambridge University | Rating | Fed |
| 1b | Karthik Thrish (Wadham, 19) | 2195 | IND | 0-1 | Rajat Makkar (St Catharine's, 19) | 2418m | FRA |
| 2w | Daniel G H Gallagher (Somerville, 25) | 2281 | ENG | ½-½ | Alex Leslie (Emmanuel, aged 20) | 2216c | ENG |
| 3b | Aron Saunders (Wadham, 20) | 2263 | ENG | 0-1 | Remy Rushbrooke (Clare, capt, 20) | 2136 | ENG |
| 4w | Henry Adams (New, 20) | 2181 | ENG | ½-½ | Ranesh Ratnesan (Jesus, 20) | 2138c | ENG |
| 5b | Andrea Henderson de La Fuente (Christ Church, 24) | 2013wf | AND | 1-0 | Julia Volovich (Trinity, 20) | 1957 | ENG |
| 6w | Savin Dias (Pembroke, 18) | 2026 | ENG | 1-0 | James Windram (Homerton, 19) | 2009 | CAN |
| 7b | Charley (Canzhou) He (Corpus Christi, 20) | 2018 | CHN | ½-½ | Nicolas Pacetti Terra (Homerton, 20) | 1967 | POR |
| 8w | Connor Clarke (Hertford, capt, 19) | 2043 | ENG | ½-½ | Arjun Gupta (Trinity, 20) | 1959 | IND |
| Av. Rating 2127.5 | 4-4 | Av. Rating 2100.0 | |||||
Reserves: Ryan Khai Jie Pang (Trinity, Oxford, rating SGP 1951, Malcolm Sow (Churchill, Cambridge, rating SGP 1874 - they also played a game, which was won by the Cambridge player (see below)
John Saunders reports: Having said goodbye to their record-breaking, all-conquering top board Tom O'Gorman in 2025, Oxford found themselves without a figurehead IM to lead them into battle against the ancient foes from the Fens. To make matters worse for the Dark Blues, Cambridge had in the meantime acquired a teenage IM of their own, the French-registered but English-educated and resident Rajat Makkar, who had scored 6/9 in the 2025 British Championship.
However, one board only counts for one point as Oxford knew only too well from 2025 when, despite Tom O'Gorman chalking up his fifth successive victory, Cambridge had won the match 4½-3½. After the traditional opening ceremony in which the captain of the team which most recently lost the fixture is gently cajoled by the chief arbiter into issuing a verbal challenge to the opposition, and the challenge duly accepted, we proceeded to the toss which Oxford won. Connor Clarke chose black on the odd boards. Perhaps the thinking was that, with a large disparity in rating between the Cambridge top board and the third highest rated Oxonian (who had been promoted to the top board), Oxford would do better to assume the worst there and use an 'extra' white where it might be more useful. The fact that Oxford were higher rated on every board other than the first one made them favourites.
Cambridge University team (left to right): Malcolm Sow (reserve), Rajat Makkar, Arjun Gupta, Remy Rushbrooke (captain),
Nicolas Pacetti Terra, Alex Leslie, James Windram, Ranesh Ratnesan, Julia Volovich.
The battle of the two 19-year-olds on board one proceeded with a Barry Attack, with Black throwing in an inconsequential early ...a6. Perhaps in awe of his opponent's rating, rather his position (which was nothing special), the Oxford PPE student was being decidedly uneconomical with his allotted time from move nine onwards. By move 13 he had only 16 minutes left to reach the time control at move 40, which dwindled down to six minutes at move 17. The longer he thought, the worse his moves became and soon his position was beyond repair, leaving the Cambridge economics undergraduate to mop up.
On board two Daniel Gallagher, who is studying for a D.Phil. in philosophy, chose a reasonably familiar line of the Trompowsky, substituting Qb1 for the more usual Qb3 at move ten. He opened up the position and offered a pawn sacrifice in the centre. Alex Leslie, an economist like his top board colleague, wisely opted not to be a materialist and instead equalised comfortably. The game fizzled out soon after.
Oxford University team (left to right): Aron Saunders, Andrea Henderson de la Fuente, Karthik Thrish, Daniel Gallagher, NN,
Connor Clarke (captain), Imogen Camp, Ryan Khai Jie Pang (reserve), Henry Adams, Savin Dias, Charley He.
Of the seven boards where Oxford held a rating plus, the largest margin was on board three where the mathematician Aron Saunders (incidentally, no relation of your truly) outrated Remy Rushbrooke, third-year linguistics student, by 127 FIDE points. However, rating, like age, is only a number. Having witnessed some 26 of these matches, I've developed a rule of thumb that a difference of 200+ is significant but anything less than that is much less so. The sense of occasion and importance of these matches can be disconcerting to players more used to chess in a downmarket setting, and it is not necessarily the higher rated player who has the singlemindedness to adjust to this factor.
Be that as it may, this proved to be the only board on which the lower rated player managed to win. The Cambridge captain, playing White, played a Réti opening which morphed into a reverse Pirc. White's opening lacked teeth: the Oxford player equalised comfortably and was arguably pressing for more when he suddenly veered off course with the dubious 26...Qb4?! followed by the unfortunate 27...Rg8?? Despite the blunder, Black still found an ingenious attempt to bamboozle his opponent which might have worked against a lesser opponent. However, it elicited a beautiful retort from Rushbrooke in the shape of a rook and bishop combination to give mate which Black could only stop at the cost of his queen. For this Rushbrooke was later rewarded with the brilliancy prize by a trio of grandmaster judges, Jon Speelman, Ray Keene and Daniel Fernandez.
On board four, Henry Adams, a PPE student, had White against a mathematician, Ranesh Ratnesan. The opening was a Slav and proceeded steadily until White managed to secure control of the d-file. Black then weakened his control of the f6-square by playing g6 and allowing White pressure with 31 Rf6. This didn't look like the end of the world but a fleeting opportunity for White to win came and went. Instead of 35 b4, to set up a vicious family fork if Black was unwise enough to bite, White could have played 35 Rxf6! Kxf6 and now 36 b4! when the black queen has no good square. 36...Qa6 looks safe but then 37 Qd8! and White emerges with an extra minor piece. That last trick was not easy to spot but by no means impossible for a human player on a good day. White got to play 36 Rxf6 but in a position where the black queen could dodge the bullet and secure a perpetual check.
Boards five and six proved to be the longest of the match and we'll return to consider those presently.
Players, officials and guests, including the four Anand sisters.
Charley (Canzhou) He, a 19-year-old Chinese physicist, replied to Nicolas Pacetti Terra's d-pawn opening with a Grünfeld, with the Portuguese mathematician opting for an early h4. However, the early entry of Harry the h-pawn didn't presage attacking play. Both players seemed content to play conservatively. White could perhaps have tried for more around move 20 when he had secured a knight on a good square, but instead opted for further exchanges which left an arid position which was drawn a few moves later.
If you're totting up the points so far, you'll know that the score was 3½-1½ in favour of Cambridge with three games remaining, and last year's winners just one game point from another triumph. However, the picture on the remaining boards wasn't so rosy for the Light Blues. There was a real possibility of Cambridge losing all three. But perhaps it wasn't quite that bad for the Fen dwellers. When quizzed for our predictions in the refreshment room, we elderly pundits were now expecting a 4-4 draw (after a surreptitious peek at the Elo 3000+ electronic assistants in our pockets, naturally).
So it was to prove. On board eight two mathematicians were slugging it out. The opening was a Two Knights Defence with an early Ng5. Oxford captain Connor Clarke, playing White, went in for the old-school 8 Qf3 (rather than the fashionable 8 Bd3) to which one would have hoped his opponent might have replied with a move famously analysed by a former Cambridge Varsity match player whilst imprisoned as a POW in Changi Prison, Singapore, during WW2 - 8...Rb8, the Colman variation, named after Eugene Ernest Colman (1878-1964) who played in the 1900 and 1901 Varsity matches. After his WW2 incarceration, Colman returned to England where he unfurled his prison analysis in a London League match. Instead Black replied with the underwhelming 8...Qd5 which leaves Black nothing for his sacrificed pawn. (If you want to know more about Colman, there's a potted biography of him here at this website, and for yet more I also recommend Olimpiu Urcan's biography entitled Surviving Changi which might still be obtainable.)
White retained his extra pawn out of the opening long into the middlegame and might have expected to capitalise on it but for an impatient liquidation of remaining minor pieces which severely undermined his winning chances. Eventually he reached a rook and pawn endgame a pawn up but two of White's were insolubly doubled and any hopes of winning soon evaporated.
Now with the score 4-2, the Cambridge team could at least be sure of not losing the match. But could they eke out another half point from the remaining boards in order to win? Savin Dias, at 18 the youngest player in the match and studying Economics and Management at Oxford, opened with a Rossolimo Sicilian, which his Canadian opponent, medical student James Windram, countered effectively. At an early stage White gave up bishop for knight unprovoked but it has to be said that White's pair of knight started working together as well as any pair of bishops. At one point there were three knights on the rim but the two white ones were definitely not dim but controlling a matrix of squares hampering the black rooks. On move 25 Black spurned an opportunity to challenge a white rook on the open d-file with a rook of his own, thus allowing White to strengthen his control of that file. A second opportunity arose to challenge White's d-file control but again it was unwisely missed.
Watching White's knights, pawns and rooks advance inexorably up the queenside was a delight, as was discussing the game with Jon Speelman. I was putting to him my theory that, in response to the tired old cliché trotted out by football commentators "it's a game of chess out there", we should be encouraging chess commentators to say "it's a game of rugby out there". I asked him how we should use a rugby analogy to describe this particular game and, believe it or not, we both said at the same instant "a driving maul!" Apologies to anyone who is unfamiliar with the oval ball game but watching rugby has become a passion of mine and Jon S enjoys it too. Suffice to say, Savin Dias's forceful advance on the queenside resulted in a brilliant try which he duly converted. This was voted the best game of the match by the panel of GMs. Well done, that young man.
The score was now 4-3 in favour of Cambridge and the last game to finish involved the two female players, Andrea Henderson de la Fuente, doing a D.Phil in Astrophysics at Oxford, playing Black against Julia Volovic, a mathematician at Trinity, Cambridge. The Andorran player defended the Old Indian. White's 12 b4 was less than ideal: it might have been better to chase away the g4 knight first. Black stirred the pot with 17...Rc8!? against which there was probably only one good reply but instead White tried 18 Nc5? which ran into a tactical blizzard from which White emerged a clear pawn down. Black proceeded patiently and accurately, gradually gathering more positional plusses, though missing an opportunity to wrap things up by winning a second pawn before the first time control. The pressure of being the last player to finish and needing a win to tie the match might have affected a lesser player but evidently not the Andorran rocket scientist.
Honour is satisfied: the match is drawn. Left to right: Connor Clarke (Oxford captain), Henry McWatters (RAC), Remy Rushbrooke (Cambridge captain)
The two reserve players from the rival universities, both from Singapore, played a game which didn't count towards the match...
Link to results on chess-results.com
File Updated
| Date | Notes |
|---|---|
| 8 March 2026 | Uploaded results, games and report. |