Surrey League division 2 match played at the Peace Memorial Hall, Ashtead, on 25 October 2022

Although reigning Surrey division 2 champions, Kingston’s second team are under no illusions that this season will be tough. Our prize-winning side has now sailed into the top division leaving a ragbag of old-timers and young hopefuls to crew the new ship. Julian Way’s side is up against four strong club first teams – Epsom, Surbiton, South Norwood and Ashtead – and will be a likely candidate for relegation. Better this than the alternative that we get promoted and end up having to play ourselves in division 1. Guildford seem to manage this regularly but we are more sensitive souls.

Our first encounter in the division, away to Ashtead, was far from being a disaster. Indeed, the pluses outweighed the minuses. Kingston offered stiff resistance to a strong Ashtead team that outrated Kingston by well over a hundred rating points per board.

Former club president Ljubica Lazarevic won her game on board 7. A critical position was reached where her young opponent missed a tactic which would have given some counterplay.

White to play. You can find the answer on the game page referenced above.

Julian Way drew with Phil Brooks on board 2, which given Way’s experience and strength was not a surprise despite the rating disparity. More unexpected were the draws secured by Max Selemir against Bertie Barlow on board 5 and Gregor Smith against Ian McLeod on board 6. Terrific results against formidable opponents.

The youthful Selemir promises to be a key player for Kingston in future years, while Smith, who is captaining Kingston 2 in the Thames Valley League this season, gets better with every match after returning to competitive chess from a long lay-off, and will hopefully also be a vital member of the club in years to come as both player and organiser.

Kingston’s struggled on the higher boards. Kingston first-team star Peter Lalić was for once pitted against his regular team on board 1 – intriguingly, he has decided to play for four different clubs in the main four divisions of the Surrey League this season – and got the better of current club president John Foley in a hard-fought battle. Foley was level for much of the close manoeuvring game, but chose the wrong moment to reposition his knight, losing a vital tempo after which Peter secured the win efficiently.

On board 3 another multi-club player, Ashtead’s Seb Galer, overcame the resilient Peter Andrews with White, and on the board below, in the battle of the Jonathans, Hinton (author of the much-admired A Gnat May Drink) beat Eckert. That made it 4.5-2.5 to Ashtead, and while it never looked as if Kingston would spring a surprise nor did the home side have it all their own way.

It was the second loss on successive days for Kingston, as the day before the club’s third team had been defeated 2.5-1.5 at home by Hounslow C in Thames Valley division X, which provides an excellent training ground for players new to league chess.

Stephen Moss and John Foley

Thames Valley division X match, played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston, on 24 October 2022

A number of players new to league chess have joined Kingston since the end of lockdown, and to give them game time in a relatively unpressurised situation the club has joined division X of the Thames Valley League. This is a four-board (car-full) league suitable for average club players and those building up their skills. These matches give plenty of playing practice to those who enjoy chess and want to get competitive game experience. This was also my debut as a captain of a Kingston chess team – a daunting prospect which I relish.

Overall a lot of positives can be gained, despite the disappointing result.

Stephen Daines

Surrey League division 1 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 17 October 2022

Well that was close! So close that with five games finishing virtually simultaneously at around 10.30pm it was not immediately clear which team had won. There was confusion over one result which we initially chalked down as a win and believed was enough to see us over the line, but it had gone the other way and everything hinged on Mike Healey v Neil Cannon on board 4. Healey, with Black, won and Kingston had the match by 4.5-3.5. Let’s not run it this close every week guys.

Kingston were on paper the stronger team, but as their relieved captain David Rowson said after the match ratings don’t tell the whole story and Wimbledon had brought a very experienced team to the Willoughby. I’d predicted a 6-2 win for Kingston. As usual I ended up looking very silly.

The initial results went Kingston’s way, but not without alarms. Alan Scrimgour and Wimbledon’s Stephen Carpenter drew on board 7 – an excellent result for Carpenter who was heavily outrated and playing Black. David Maycock won a wild game on board 1 against Russell Picot, who had seemed certain to prevail after smashing through on the kingside with his rook to launch what looked like a mating attack. But Maycock, playing on the increment, created complications, forced Picot’s king into no man’s land and set up his own mating net. It was classic kill or be killed, and Picot succumbed. An incredible game, an incredible win – and, as it turned out, the decisive reverse of the evening for Wimbledon.

On board 2 Peter Lalić was up against another highly creative player, Jasper Tambini. Lalić essayed the Nimzowitsch Defence (1 e4 Nc6), and what followed was 21 moves of more or less controlled violence from both players. Tambini launched his kingside pawns up the board in an all-out assault; queens and knights became entangled in the centre; neither player bothered with anything as dull as castling. But when the smoke cleared it was Black’s all-powerful centralised knight that was controlling affairs, and a tactical sequence meant Tambini was destined to lose his queen.

That made it 2.5-0.5 to Kingston, and I was feeling smug about my prediction. Rowson drew with Tony Hughes on board 6; Peter Andrews shared the points with Craig Fothergill on board 8. So far, so good. But then Wimbledon struck back with a win for the very strong junior Shahvez Ali against Silverio Abasolo, who was making his league debut for Kingston, on board 3. Ali won a pawn and had a well-placed bishop against marooned knight. Abasolo, an important addition to Kingston’s strong first team, fought hard, but Ali is a cool customer and has great technique. A titled player in the making?

That made it 3.5-2.5: close but surely Vladimir Li was winning for Kingston against Mark Dubey (who also played the Nimzowitsch Defence, which is clearly on the rise) on board 5. He certainly felt so after the game and was disgusted by what happened, when in a time scramble he chose the wrong option and lost a piece. I tried to console a distraught Li with Nietzsche’s handy old aphorism: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Useful for anything except real – as opposed to metaphorical – death.

The scores were tied and now it was all down to Healey. Wimbledon’s Cannon, with White, had the edge in the early part of the game, but no encounter with Healey is straightforward. The undergrowth became dense, the forest dark, both players got lost on several occasions, and there were blunders aplenty. But when some light emerged, Healey had a pawn on e2 and a rook about to move to d1 to complete the coronation. Cannon, faced with material wipe-out, resigned. Kingston had won, but the match could so easily have gone the other way and Wimbledon, who have not had an easy time over the past couple of seasons, could take plenty of consolation from the manner of their defeat, especially playing away. They remain a formidable force.

Stephen Moss

Kingston v Epsom, Lauder Trophy, Willoughby Arms, Kingston, on 10 October 2022

It was a bad night for Kingston, as the holders of the Lauder Trophy suffered the indignity of going out in this season’s preliminary stage, beaten 4.5-1.5 by a strong Epsom team. Kingston’s stellar run was brought crashing down. The last time Kingston lost a match was in November 2021 when Epsom 3 beat Kingston 2. So, Epsom has started and finished our unbeaten run.

The Lauder Trophy is a tournament in which the teams are restricted in the total rating of the players, and the main challenge to captains is to spreadsheet juggle their players to form a team which comes in under the limit. Epsom captain and prime mover Marcus Gosling has finally found the winning formula: international masters on the top boards and underrated juniors on the bottom boards.

Alas, Kingston were not able to counter this pattern and lost on the bottom three boards. David Rowson secured a draw on board 1 against IM Graeme Buckley, though did wonder later whether he should have played on given that the tide was running strongly against Kingston. The Buckley family were out in force for Epsom, with Graeme’s wife Susan Lalić defeating Julian Way on board 2. Their daughters Emma and Lucy obtained a point between them on boards 3 and 4, Emma gamely stepping in after 30 minutes to face Alan Scrimgour on board 3 when the scheduled player Epsom failed to turn up. Meanwhile, Susan’s son Peter Lalić was playing some thematic games in the garden, being too strong to fit into the Kingston line-up.

Being objective, the games were not of the highest quality. However, our board 6 Stephen Daines was impressed by his young opponent Maya Keen, who outplayed him in the endgame. Stephen hasn’t played a rated game in 40 years, but as a Willoughby pub regular he decided to join our chess club having seen how much everybody enjoys themselves. The pub landlord, who is very keen on his trophy cabinet being filled with silverware, looks forward to asking Stephen how he got on.

The photographs show that another match was also in progress alongside the crunch Lauder clash – Kingston B suffered a surprise defeat to an outgraded Surbiton C in division 2 of the Thames Valley League. It really wasn’t a great night for Kingston in terms of results, but the upside was the chess-related energy at the Willoughby. We had 24 players upstairs, together with parents and spectators. In the garden, where you can play in heated and well-lit beach huts, there were at least a dozen players. So in total there were nigh on 40 players at the club tonight. Who said chess was dead?

Kingston congratulates Epsom on a convincing victory and wishes them luck in the next round against Guildford.

John Foley

Alexander Cup first-round match played over 10 boards at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston, on Monday 3 October 2022

This was the first match of the new season for Kingston and a very important one – the first round of the Alexander Cup, Surrey’s premier knockout tournament, which Kingston won last season for the first time in 46 years. To have fallen at the first hurdle would have been a little embarrassing, but despite odd moments of doubt that never really looked likely on a night when a very strong Kingston team emerged as 8-2 winners. South Norwood fought hard, but in the end their lack of strength in depth told.

Top board saw a clash between Kingston’s David Maycock and South Norwood’s Marcus Osborne. Osborne had White and played an Open Catalan, but Maycock gained a slight edge out of the opening. He missed an opportunity to consolidate his advantage in the middle game, and the position resolved itself into a queen and rook endgame in which Maycock had an extra pawn. The players decided that, despite the pawn advantage, a draw was inevitable and repeated moves. Later computer analysis taking the game to more than 170 moves suggested they were right. That pawn was never going to break free.

On board 2, the ever dependable Peter Lalić, with White, had a surprisingly straightforward victory over Tariq Oozerally, who was in effect lost after move 16 when his queen was trapped after an overambitious foray into enemy territory. Michael Healey had a much tougher time of it on board 3 against Owen Phillips, and admitted he was fortunate to escape with a draw. Phillips had two connected pawns running and looked certain to break through, but Healey kept fighting, time became a factor, Phillips went wrong and the pawns never quite made it to the eighth. A let-off for Kingston.

South Norwood were hugely outrated on the lower boards, and Peter Andrews and Alan Scrimgour proved too experienced for their opponents, giving Kingston an early 2-0 lead. The ever resilient Ken Chamberlain made Julian Way work harder for his win, and took the game to a rook and bishop v rook and knight endgame. But Way, as he usually does in endgames, found a way, his knight proving too mobile for Chamberlain’s blocked bishop. The “bad bishop”: is it my imagination or does that determine the outcome of about 50% of all chess games?

On board 5, Will Taylor played a nicely controlled Petrov’s Defence to manoeuvre a positional edge over veteran Roy Reddin before trapping Reddin’s bishop and prompting immediate resignation, while David Rowson, with White on board 6, saw off another South Norwood stalwart, Ron Harris, in a closed Sicilian. Harris, who loves to attack, accidentally mislaid a knight, but it turned out to be an interesting positional sacrifice, not sound but sufficient to conjure up an attack which got him back to near-equality. The canny Rowson was, though, unflustered in defence, his rook outgunned Harris’s bishop in the endgame, and White mopped up Black’s doubled pawns to make resignation inevitable.

That left two terrific attacking games – one of which went in Kingston’s favour while the other didn’t. Vladimir Li, playing White, had a tactically sharp encounter with Mohammad Sameer-Had which, once the dust had cleared, resolved itself into an endgame in which Li had knight against bishop plus an extra pawn. With all the pawns on both sides disconnected, Li used his knight – it was a night for mobile knights – to force Black’s bishop offside to allow the White king to capture the crucial c-pawn and open the path for a passed pawn.

In the other game, the only game which Kingston lost, our president John Foley was downed by South Norwood captain Simon Lea. The game hinged on the thematic breakthrough d5 against the Slav.

White has just played 19. d5. This move is the culmination of White’s strategy and if it works (which in this case it did) White has an open game with free-flowing bishops and a clear advantage. However, Black had correctly prepared for this move and had 19…Nc5! up his sleeve. The game could have proceeded 20. d6 Bg5 21. Bxg5 Qxg5 22.Re3 Nxb3 (taking out the strong bishop) 23. Qxb3 Nd3 24. Rf1 Nf4 and Black has tricky counterplay.

The reason Black hesitated is that he was concerned about the advanced d-pawn. In practice, it would not be able to survive being so far from support. Black decided to exchange pawns first, which precluded the knight from reaching c5. The resulting open position played into White’s hands, and Lea conducted the final stage con brio.

24. Bd6 is winning. Afterwards, John surmised that often it is better to continue with one’s plan and rely upon favourable tactics rather than be diverted by fear that the opponent may have obtained a benefit – in this case an advanced pawn. A strategic hesitation and the game was lost.

Happily for Kingston, the assassination of the president did not presage collapse. The lesser citizens were doing enough to carry the day, and Kingston were through to a semi-final against Wallington or Streatham. The dream of back-to-back Alexander cups is still on.

Stephen Moss