A champion chess player from Aberdeen who became the first Scot in 58 years to win the British title will take on the world’s elite next week.
Jonathan Rowson, 36, from Rosemount, has been given a wild-card entry into the Super Sixteen tournament taking place at London’s Kensington Olympia.
He was invited to compete in the nine-day contest after the world champion, 23-year-old Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, withdrew due to a heavy workload.
“I am hugely grateful, very excited and suitably nervous to be the wild card at the London tournament,” he said.
Mr Rowson has enjoyed a rapid rise in the ratings of world chess in a career that began while he was a pupil at Aberdeen Grammar.
From there, he went on to represent the Bon Accord Chess Club in the city before the Scottish Chess championship in 1999 and achieving grand master status.
This was followed five years later with a victory over Peter Wells of England to become the first Scot since 1946 to become the UK champion – Aberdonian Robert Coombe was his predecessor almost six decades previously.
There followed three years of successive British titles, to add to the Canadian Open Championship he had won in 2000.
Away from chess, he has numerous academic qualifications, including social science degrees from Oxford and Harvard.
The Super Sixteen Grandmaster Rapid at the London Chess Classic runs between December 7 and 15.
It will feature England’s top six players as well as others from US, Israel, Russia and Hungary.