IT WAS checkmate for 20 schoolchildren who took on a chess grandmaster in a simultaneous exhibition game.

The chess enthusiasts, mostly from the Sussex Junior Chess association, tested their skills against former British champion Nigel Short at Brighton College.

Mr Short played all 20 at once, proceeding around the room one move at a time. Lucas Renshaw, 15, of Brighton College, was the pick of the opposition, being the last to be defeated.

He said: “I tried to play a closed game but I made a bad error in the middle of the game and that cost me.

“It was really exciting to be playing someone like Mr Short, though, and it inspired me to play an opening I had never played before. It was just such a privilege.”

Despite none of the students beating the grandmaster, whose ELO score – a chess rating system – is an impressive 2,664, they put up a good fight.

Before taking on the budding chess players Mr Short talked them through a game he played when he was last in Brighton more than 30 years ago at the 1984 British Championships.

It was a fantastic opportunity for the students to hear tips from one of the country’s best chess players.

Mr Short, 49, earned the title of grandmaster aged 19 in 1985, becoming at that time the youngest grandmaster in the world.

He was already making waves in the chess world well before that, having beaten Soviet grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi when he was aged ten in a simultaneous exhibition game similar to the one at Brighton College.

Although he has never been a world champion, he did take on Garry Kasparov – widely regarded as the greatest chess player of all-time – in a world championship game in 1992, and was for a time ranked number three in the world.

Mr Short’s visit came about after it was suggested by his friend Lord Robert Skidelsky, chairman of the governors at Brighton College, at the closing dinner of the London Chess Classic.

Lord Skidelsky, a chess enthusiast himself, was keen to give students from the college’s own chess club and from Sussex Junior Chess the chance to learn from a master and test their skills.