"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."

http://www.theweekinchess.com/html/...

Of course, the Open field in 2003 at Gibraltar's inaugural edition wasn't that large compared with today, but already pretty strong, and it's always nice to be the first name in the winner list of a traditional tournament series :)

A new book by Smirin is coming out from Quality Chess, of course on the King's Indian Defense:

http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/blog/...

Won or shared first places:
Nikaia (Open) 1984, Athens Acropolis (Invitational, 12th) 1988, Kavala (Open) 1991, Gausdal Troll Masters 1992 (among others, alongside with young Vladimir Kramnik), Wijk aan Zee, Sonnevanck Master 1992 (closed invitation, ahead of joint Van Wely and Nijboer), Gausdal Troll Masters 1993, Komotini GP (Open) 1993, Corfu Open 1993, Gausdal International (Open) 1995, Ankara Zonal 1995 (shared), Rishon Le Zion GM 1996 (with Alterman, ahead of Yudasin, 10 players), Korinthos Open 1997, Panormo Zonal 1998 (shared), Glifada Open 2001, Gausdal Classics GM 2002 (joint with Kualots, best on tie-break, and Lie; 7./8. young Magnus Carlsen), Thessaloniki, White Tower Open 2002, <Gibraltar Open 2003 (inaugural edition of the series, joint with Short)>, Athens Acropolis (Invitational, 18th) 2003, Kavala Open 2003, <Hastings 2003/2004 (the last edition which has been played as a round robin, joint with Rowson)>, Korinthos Open 2004, Thessaloniki, Kalamaria Open 2005 and 2007, Capelle-la-Grande-Open 2008 (shared with seven other players, Gashimov winning on tie-break), Nikaia (Open) 2014, first with a clean score of 9/9, Ikaros Open (Aegean Open Championship) 2016.