"Only two of England's twenty seven Grandmasters have entered and this is undoubtedly due to the ridiculous BCF regulation permitting any Commonwealth master to play in the Championship. Players, journalists and others have been calling for a change in the rules for many years. There were renewed calls for change in this column after the relative unknown RB Ramesh made the last Championship ' an Indian takeaway' and scooped the £10,000 first prize in the face of limited opposition. Even as far back as 1999, GMs John Emms and Chris Ward submitted a well supported with a petition calling for reform.

"There are no fees offered to the titled players and England internationals are not even offered expenses and with so many strong foreign players in the field the tournament is highly unlikely to be worthwhile for a professional English player. They have voted with their feet. The highest ranked Englishman at Edinburgh is Nick Pert who is the English number twenty three after that comes GM Peter Wells at number twenty six.

"As usual there are plenty of players from India, I counted thirteen in the Championship many of whom have sponsorship and can afford to come and play and they will make off with much of the prize fund. The situation is made even more absurd this year with the top seed being a Cypriot, GM Vasilios Kotronias who recently entered the Commonwealth when he left the Greek Chess Federation. The majority of entries to the British Women's Championship are from India."