When Mieses travelled down to the XXIV Hastings Chess Congress in the winter of 1948, fifty-three years had passed since his first visit to the south coast. He had come to Hastings in 1895 as a thirty-year-old, for the major international tournament won by the young American Harry Nelson Pillsbury ahead of Lasker, Chigorin and Tarrasch. By 1948 he no longer lived in Leipzig or Berlin, but in London. A naturalised British subject since 1947, he had survived two world wars and an exile from Nazi Germany, and at eighty-three he was now playing in the Reserves tournament, one rung below the Premier.

The final round on 8 January 1949 put him across the board from Edward Guthlac Sergeant. The two had known each other for decades. Thirteen years earlier, Sergeant had beaten him at Margate. This time the tables turned. Sergeant chose the Exchange Variation of the French Defence with Black, an opening without sharpness. His eighth move was a mistake. Mieses attacked, and at the end of the congress the tournament committee awarded the brilliancy prize to the eighty-three-year-old. A year later he returned to Hastings one more time, for the 1949/50 congress. That was his last tournament.