Tony Hughes wins All Saints Blitz IV on Wednesday 24 April 2024
Photograph: Tony Hughes (left) sweeping aside Stephen Moss while Ian Swann and Nick Grey watch in admiration
Tony Hughes glided to his third victory out of three appearances at the regular “Last Wednesday of the Month” blitz held at All Saints Church in central Kingston. The top seed never looked in any danger as he scored 4½/5, half a point ahead of fellow Wimbledon club member Stephen Carpenter and David Shalom from Kingston. Thirteen players participated in the event with another five playing casual chess in the atrium. This is a remarkable upsurge in chess activity at the church which only introduced chess at the turn of this year.
The play was brisk without any coffee breaks which meant that the event finished by noon having started at 10.15. David Rowson played the “Swiss Gambit” by losing to lower-rated David Shalom in the first round and hoped that the draw would be favourable thereafter but with only five rounds there was not enough time to catch up. David Shalom has been playing very well since he started taking chess seriously again this season and his only setback was a loss against Stephen Carpenter.
The suggestion of a sixth round may be taken up in the future if the number of participants continues to increase. Fortunately five rounds were sufficient to generate a single winner. Tony collected his customary box of chocolatey comestibles from Olivia Smithies, who came along as assistant controller.
Olivia had learned of this regular event while assisting at the annual King’s Head “Beer and Blitz” tournament at the weekend which commemorates members of the chess community who have died during the year. Kingston member Ameet Ghasi was runner- up to GM Eldar Gasanov at this year’s King’s Head event. Olivia was eager to observe the efficient manner in which a blitz tournament could be managed using an iPad. She may just have worked herself into a new role.
Tony Hughes receives first prize from Olivia Smithies
One of the attractions for Olivia is that this was a Chess and Crèche event. Immediately behind the chess section is the toddlers’ play area. Olivia was able to monitor the results whilst at the same time supervising her daughter, who is nearly three years old.
Chess and Crèche: all generations are catered for at All Saints
Thus chess activity at All Saints Church spans three generations – grandparents, parents and children. The next All Saints Blitz – the fifth in the series – will be held on Wednesday 29 May, starting at 10.15am and running until around 12.30pm.
Kingston 2 v Surbiton 1, Surrey League division 2 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 22 April 2024
There was nothing (except local pride) riding on this match – Surbiton could not catch divisional champions Ashtead and we were safe from relegation – but our neighbours in the borough of Kingston nevertheless brought a strong first team to the Willoughby and were too good for our seconds, running out 5-2 winners. We were nonetheless happy with our four draws, and the other three games were all very well contested, so it was a satisfying evening given the rating disparity between the two teams.
Performance of the night for Kingston came from Jon Eckert, who played with typical élan with Black on board 4 to hold Liam Bayly, despite the latter being rated 250 points above him. Alan Scrimgour drew with the dangerous Altaf Chaudhry on board 3, and David Shalom also secured an excellent draw against Graham Alcock on board 7. Indeed, in the bar afterwards when I congratulated him on the draw against an opponent rated 100 points above him, he looked a little crestfallen at not having pressed home his advantage. I must learn not to seek to limit my players’ expectations. Ratings are only numbers after all.
Our other draw came from David Rowson in the battle of the Davids – his opponent was the highly rated David Scott – on board 1. David R played a Caro-Kann to which David S responded with a very solid set-up, and after some complicated middlegame jostling a draw was agreed in the position below, where White has a small edge because of Black’s pawn islands.
“I think I should have played on as I had a bit of an advantage,” David said later with typical honesty, “but I was getting tired after trying to work out what was going on previously. Neither of us completely understood what was going on.”
There was a fascinating clash of the captains on board 5 – Kingston skipper Gregor Smith with White against his opposite number Nick Faulks. Gregor played the Smith-Morra Gambit (how could a Smith play anything else?) against Nick’s Sicilian and really went for it. We will show the game in full.
The other two games also resulted in losses, but both were extremely tight encounters. Nick Grey was beaten by Andrew Boughen on board 6, extra pawns in a minor piece endgame deciding the issue, and Surbiton’s ever creative Jasper Tambini got the better of Julian Way in a high-level match-up on board 2. Julian played a sharp response to Jasper’s Ruy Lopez, and after 11 moves he had a slight edge in the position below.
But Jasper is a fine tactician and made imaginative use of his knights on the kingside while threatening a pawn storm on the queenside. He built up a solid advantage and eventually found a winning tactic to seal the deal. That gave Surbiton a well-deserved 5-2 victory in a match played in an excellent spirit between two clubs who have mastered the art of friendly local rivalry.
Stephen Moss, Kingston captain in Surrey League division 2
Kingston B v Hounslow A, Thames Valley division 2 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston, on 18 April 2024
This was a remarkably professional win by Kingston B over Hounslow A, and it suddenly (and rather surprisingly) puts the Bs in a good position to win promotion and join the A team in division 1 of the Thames Valley League. Whether we really want two teams in the top division is another matter, but we probably have to go for it and see if we can cope next season if we do get there.
In this match everyone played their part, even me! I managed a quick draw against Hounslow captain (and Thames Valley chair) David White on board 3, finally abandoning my hopeless Scandinavian in favour of the Caro-Kann, which at least appears to have the virtue of solidity. We shall see.
Charlie Cooke drew on board 6 against promising junior Vibhush Pusapadi, and Gregor Smith got the third draw of the night against JJ Padam, though the Kingston captain looked slightly disappointed at not being able to convert his pawn advantage in a blocked position. Meanwhile on board 5, Nick Grey continued his excellent recent run with a well-controlled win with Black over Eugene Gregorio, who always seems to play at blitz speed and may, Nick thought, have missed a chance to win the exchange in his desire to crack on with the game.
The encounters on the two top boards were interesting struggles, both eventually going Kingston’s way to make the final score in the match an emphatic 4.5-1.5. Peter Andrews provided a helpful summary of his game against Hounslow veteran Leon Fincham: “I retained an edge through a typically tense opening, and my opponent’s thematic opening of the position was unsound. There was a flurry of tactics, at the end of which I had a material advantage and the safer king, so could mop up safely even with little time on my clock.”
Peter pinpoints this as the key position and the moment on which the game turned. Black has just played 16…f5, the expected move in a King’s Indian-type position:
Julian Way also won a very nice game on board 1, demonstrating once again what a top-class endgame player he is. We join the game after White’s 28th move – coincidentally another f5!? White’s attack looks somewhat scary, but Black has it all under control.
A very encouraging evening and a fine result for Kingston and for Gregor, who will be giving up the captaincy when he decamps to Oxfordshire in the summer. He will be sorely missed at Kingston as organiser, assistant secretary, captain and all-round good guy, but one hopes he will stay in touch from afar. Maybe he could even play in Maidenhead!
Whether his legacy will be getting Kingston B into division 1 of the Thames Valley League will depend on his team’s final match of the season – the crunch derby with Surbiton B on 29 April. As the league table (see below under the match scorecard) shows, that really will be a zero-sum clash. With Richmond B almost certain to beat bottom-of-the-table Staines in their last match, whoever wins the Kingston-Surbiton encounter will get promotion while the loser is likely to be squeezed into third place (with just two teams promoted). It should be quite a night as we mark Gregor’s departure.
The first of an occasional series in which Kingston members and friends of the club choose the player who has most inspired them. Illustration by Theo Esposito Bennett
One of the first chess books I ever owned was not really a book at all, but a very slim booklet, produced by the Soviet press, with minimal production values, which somehow found itself in a bookshop in London in 1969. It contained the games of the recently concluded world championship match. The contenders were the ninth champion, Tigran Petrosian, and his successor, Boris Spassky.
I understood few of the moves, but that added to the mysterious fascination of the event. If the play of these two masters had been at all comprehensible to me it would have meant that there was nothing exalted about it. Likewise, I felt somehow – or rather read somewhere – that Petrosian was himself a player of special mystery. The American chess writer Irving Chernev, in another of my early chess books (The Most Instructive Games of Chess ever Played), had encouraged this belief by his comment on the game Petrosian-Korchnoi, 1946: “Petrosian must have the spark of genius! How else could he, with a few mysterious moves, cause the quick collapse of so eminent a player as Korchnoi?” I wasn’t aware at the time that in 1946 Korchnoi was only 15 years old.
In 1946 Petrosian himself was only 16 or 17. His already exceptional talent had its roots in a very tough childhood, as described by the man himself in an interview in Life magazine in April 1969. According to this, his Armenian parents were illiterate and he was orphaned at a young age. Growing up in wartime Tbilisi, Georgia, he had to work as a road-sweeper to earn some roubles, or perhaps kopeks, to survive. This was clearly a formative experience.
“I started sweeping streets in the middle of winter,” Petrosian recalled, “and it was horrible. Of course, there were no machines then, and everything had to be done by hand. Some of the older men helped me out. I was a weak boy. And I was ashamed of being a street sweeper – that’s natural, I suppose. It wasn’t too bad in the early morning when the streets were empty, but when it got light and the crowds came out I really hated it.”
Petrosian was one of the golden generation of Soviet players who peaked in the 1960s. This also included Viktor Korchnoi, Mikhail Tal, Spassky and Efim Geller. All of them grew up in hard times: the second world war and the final years of Stalinism. To those of us who followed the chess of that era, each player seemed to have a distinct personality and style, but Petrosian’s style was probably the most singular.
One might speculate as to whether the experiences of his early years had an influence on this. With the kopeks saved from his road-sweeping he had bought Nimzowitsch’s My System, and he often afterwards stated how significant that positional chess manual had been for him. In his games there is usually an emphasis on the permanent features of the position – pawn structures, strong and weak squares, the long-term relative values of the pieces and so on. Curiously, like Mikhail Tal, Petrosian was known for his sacrifices, but, unlike Tal, Petrosian’s were often defensive, the most famous being his exchange sacrifices. Again, in contrast to Tal, Petrosian sacrificed material not to gain time but for long-term positional reasons.
As an example, here is the position after White’s 25th move in the game Reshevsky-Petrosian from the 1953 Candidates’ Tournament, Zurich:
However, with Petrosian it can sometimes be difficult to say whether a sacrifice like this is defensive or offensive. His game against Czech (and later German) grandmaster Vlastimil Hort from the 1970 European Team Championships is an example. Petrosian is Black and plays the Winawer Variation of the French Defence.
One reason Petrosian’s style attracted me was that commentors often referred to his deep understanding of the mysteries of positional chess. Of course, as a novice player, I was far from understanding even some basic aspects of the game, let alone its deep mysteries, but I was hopeful that studying Petrosian’s games might initiate me into some of these.
One aspect of his play which I could hope to find myself copying at my own undistinguished level was his pragmatism, in particular his readiness to make the moves required by the position even if they looked ugly or humbling. Petrosian seemed to be saying that it was OK to retreat a piece or to repeat a move if necessary. The following position in the fourth game of the world championship match against Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963 is an example of this.
In retrospect, I think another reason why I was drawn to Petrosian’s style of play was my misconception that if you were a master of strategy you didn’t need to worry so much about tactical details – and I was weak at tactics. In fact, as many commentators have noted, Petrosian was actually a superb tactician. You can’t base your game on strategy if the tactics are wrong. In addition, it’s been pointed out that Petrosian’s image as a purely defensive player is false. He could also play attacking combinations and, according to Spassky, “It is to Petrosian’s advantage that his opponents never know when he is suddenly going to play like Mikhail Tal.”
The 10th game from Spassky’s world championship match with Petrosian in 1966 must have been the kind of thing he had in mind. Petrosian has White against Spassky’s King’s Indian Defence.
Interestingly, Petrosian had perpetrated a very similar combination 10 years before on Vladimir Simagin (Petrosian-Simagin, Moscow Championship play-off 1956):
For more than a decade Petrosian fought his way through zonals, interzonals and candidates tournaments against his peers, until he finally qualified to play Botvinnik for the world title in 1963. He won this match convincingly 12.5-9.5. It might be said that he was fortunate that Botvinnik’s right to a return match had been abolished by Fide, but Petrosian proved he was a worthy champion by defending his title against Boris Spassky in 1966 with a score of 12.5-11.5. He lost to Spassky in 1969, but he remained one of the top players in the world until his death in 1984 at the early age of 55. He won the Soviet Chess Championship four times; the only players to record more wins were Botvinnik and Tal with six titles.
The ways in which Petrosian is sometimes described make it seem as if he inhabited a chess world of his own. This could be seen as implying either his limitations (he is often regarded as too cautious, with a very high percentage of draws) or as a sign of his unique understanding of the game. I have to accept that he did draw many games, but he also lost very few (his record playing for the Soviet Union in 10 Olympiads was +78, = 50, -1).
To conclude, in my view, playing through his best games can enrich any player’s understanding of chess’s infinite possibilities. This was brought home to me again recently when Kingston’s head of training, FM Julian Way, led an online discussion of the fifth game of the match with Botvinnik. It was a great choice; there is so much to learn from it.
Ashtead 1 v Kingston 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at Ashtead Peace Memorial Hall on 16 April 2024
We are safe! From relegation in division 2 of the Surrey League that is. In fact, we were already before this match because South Norwood 1 beat Coulsdon 2 on the previous evening to leave Coulsdon stranded in bottom place. But getting a 3.5-3.5 draw with Ashtead, runaway winners in the division and on course to take their place in division 1 next season, emphatically made the point that we deserved to stay up.
It was a very solid performance from a team of Kingston stalwarts. The president, John Foley, got an early draw with Black against the highly rated Dan Rosen on board 2, and the also outrated Jon Eckert drew with Bertie Barlow on board 5. Jon compromised his pawn structure to build a very promising attack, but Bertie neutralised it well and peace was eventually declared.
Peter Andrews had White against Phil Brooks on board 1 and, conscious of the disparity in ratings and the way the match might pan out, played a very solid English opening which led to a draw in the position below. He was ahead on the clock, which may have influenced his opponent’s decision, and on his part was conscious that he had two other important matches later in the week, so preserving energy was important. Peter called it a “cynical” draw, but let’s call it a canny and very useful one against a strong player.
John Bussmann was in early trouble against the experienced Jonathan Hinton on board 4. The Ashtead player sacrificed the exchange for a big attack, and it proved well-judged, with his pieces combining irresistibly to overwhelm John’s king. John is making his way back into competitive chess after a long layoff and this was a tough outing.
At this point Ashtead had the advantage, though Nick Grey on board 7 with White against Adrian Waldock had established a passed c-pawn and had good chances in what was shaping up to be a tricky endgame. I thought I was drawing against Tom Barton on board 6, but as so often my poor endgame technique was letting me down and a few imprecise moves, not helped by time trouble, left me struggling to hold the position.
The key game was the board 3 encounter between Kingston chair Alan Scrimgour and Seb Galer. The two are old adversaries, and Galer was determined to avenge a previous defeat – perhaps too determined because it may be that he overreached himself. Seb played a Pirc – and played it perkily. This key early position was reached:
Alan’s win made it 2.5-2.5 and left me and Nick struggling with our respective endgames. I lost mine rather miserably – back, for the umpteenth time, to the drawing board – but Nick was well ahead on the clock and playing confidently. Eventually his opponent cracked, and Nick had a memorable win to draw the match. As we left, the vanquished Adrian Waldock and his Ashtead team-mates were still poring over the final few moves of his game and looking for ways to save it. Too late, I’m afraid. We are on the way home, happy to share the spoils against the division two champions.
Stephen Moss, Kingston captain in Surrey League division 2
Surbiton D v Kingston C, Thames Valley division X match played at Fircroft, Surbiton on 8 April 2024
The whooshing continues. Two days after beating Richmond E, the Kingston third team put Surbiton D to the sword in an away match at the refurbished Fircroft, where Surbiton have happily been reinstalled this season after a couple of years’ absence during the restoration. It was a very professional 2.5-1.5 win, with Kingston C captain Stephen Daines on this occasion putting himself in the team and enjoying an important victory on board 4.
Charlie Cooke was first to finish, winning smoothly against James Lawrence. Stephen made it 2-0 with a controlled victory against Shelia Siu, rook domination allowing him to drive home a passed pawn. But Sean Tay, having played an ambitious (but completely sound) early sacrifice against Kim Cross, then miscalculated in a key position, missed forced mate and went down to a 49-move defeat which he said as he left would guarantee him a sleepless night. The opening and Sean’s marvellous missed opportunity is worth looking at (though not necessarily worth endlessly replaying in your mind in the early hours of the morning!).
Sean’s defeat left securing victory in the hands of the reliable Ergo Nobel on board 2, and he did not disappoint, fending off Phil Goodings’ queen-and-knight attack (often a fatal combination) and earning the draw which gave Kingston the match by 2.5-1.5. Another excellent performance by a well-marshalled and highly motivated team.
Kingston C v Richmond E, Thames Valley division X match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 8 April 2024
“We are whooshing!,” said triumphant Kingston captain Stephen Daines after this 3-1 win against Richmond E, which backed up last week’s victory by Kingston 4 away to South Norwood. What he meant was that the players in our third and fourth teams, many of whom have been introduced to competitive over-the-board chess this season, are now finding their feet and starting to produce excellent results.
Stephen, seen in the photograph above watching his players in their four-board match, sees his role as nurturing new talent, and has done a great job this season juggling three teams across almost 30 matches. Three of the four Kingston players in this match are new to the club this season, and the team did well to beat some match-hardened opponents.
Leon Mellor-Sewell with Black lost to the highly rated Alex Shard on board 1, losing the thread as his Sicilian Defence moved into the middlegame. But his three team-mates all won. Robin Kerremans and Greg Heath beat Richmond veterans Laurie Catling and Julian Bedale, and David Bickerstaff defeated the higher-rated Thomas Brand. Truly a result to send Captain Daines to the bar in a happy frame of mind.
South Norwood 3 v Kingston 4, Surrey League division 5 match played at West Thornton Community Centre, Thornton Heath on 4 April 2024
On the same night that the old soaks of Kingston 2 lost to South Norwood 1, a (mostly) young, boundlessly enthusiastic Kingston 4 team led by acting captain Ed Mospan strolled to a 4.5-1.5 victory against South Norwood 3. After our all-conquering season in 2022-23, we have had some setbacks this year, but here was hope for the future: the inspiring Mospan, who initiated the Kingston Rapidplays a few years ago, has returned to the club after a three-year absence, and four of the other five players are new to Kingston this season. Clubs have constantly to renew themselves, and here was renewal in action.
Ed himself, perhaps weighed down by the burden of the acting captaincy (the usual third- and fourth-team captain, Stephen Daines, was indisposed), lost a quickfire game to John Ganev on board 2, both players blitzing out their moves as if they were competing in one of Ed’s much-missed rapidplays (time for a revival surely). That gave South Norwood 3 an early 1-0 lead, but it was to be the only reverse of the night.
A succession of wins for Kingston’s new “fab four”, none of whom has played more than a handful of rated games for us or indeed anybody else, followed. David Bickerstaff (pictured above, right, alongside Captain Mospan) beat the very experienced South Norwood captain David Howes on board 3; Leon Mellor-Sewell, brimming with confidence, won well on board 4; Ergo Nobel, continuing a fine run of form, won on board 5; and Rob Taylor triumphed in a chaotic game on board 6.
Sean Tay, a veteran in this Kingston team having been at the club for a couple of seasons, then rounded off a very satisfying evening with a draw against super-solid South Norwood stalwart Ken Chamberlain after a three-hour struggle on board 1.
Kingston may have had more glamorous team victories this season, but there has been none that gave me this much pleasure: a group of players relatively new to chess bonding as a team and bringing home the spoils after the sort of lengthy journey that only members who are really enthusiastic about playing for the club are willing to make. That all-important renewal is in safe hands.
South Norwood 1 v Kingston 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at West Thornton Community Centre, Thornton Heath on 4 April 2024
South Norwood are usually a very different proposition at home compared with when they travel, and so it proved here. Threatened by relegation from Surrey division 2, they put out their strongest possible team against Kingston 2 and ran out winners by 5-2. But we had some hard luck stories, and on another night we might have come away with a 3.5-3.5 draw.
The first game to finish was a gloriously violent struggle between South Norwood’s Ronald Harris and Kingston’s Jon Eckert on board 4. Forty years ago, Ron was a 2200-level player and, now 80, has retained a great deal of his strength. He plays at rapid speed, loves to attack, will seize the initiative at every opportunity, and has probably forgotten more about chess than most of us will ever know.
Jon Eckert is now slouch either and is always up for an over-the-board punch-up. The two of them fashioned a game which, sitting next to them, I could barely take my eyes off. This was raw, kill-or-be-killed chess and is worth looking at in full – a glorious French Winawer in which both sides play with the zero regard for defence.
That made it 1-0 to South Norwood, but Kingston were soon on the board after a draw between old rivals Alan Scrimgour and Paul Dupré on board 3. Alan had made most of the running against Paul’s Alekhine’s Defence, but with time starting to become a factor he allowed his advantage to slip and by the end Black had not just equalised but established a small plus in the position below:
Peter Andrews got a good draw with Black against South Norwood’s highly rated Tariq Oozeerally on board 2 to make it 2-1 to South Norwood. Both players played with commendable accuracy in an Alapin Sicilian and peace was declared after 30 cagey moves in the dead-level position below:
Kingston’s Charlie Cooke lost a well-contested game with the higher-rated Michael Livesey on board 7 to put South Norwood 3-1 up, but I managed to win my game with White against Oliver Weiss on board 5 to narrow the gap to 3-2. I had also faced an Alekhine’s Defence, but unlike Alan did not have the courage to challenge it and played a rather anaemic opening. My opponent had a plus (at one point threateningly healthy) for most of the game, but as a messy middlegame developed he allowed me some counterplay and missed a forced mate in two in a position where with best play he had good drawing chances.
Beating a higher-rated player has been such a rarity for me this season that I have analysed the encounter in the Games section, though as others have pointed out the computer-heavy nature of the annotation does hint at the somewhat threadbare nature of my mid-game analysis. I really was guessing at key moments. But it was all fine in the end thanks to my opponent losing the thread in this position:
Black played 28… Be6 here, which allows an unstoppable mate after 29. Qc1. Instead he should play 28…Qf4, which gives good (if complicated) drawing chances. The lines which might ensue are shown in my annotation of the game in the Games section.
So 3-2 to South Norwood with two games to go. David Rowson stood better against the very strong Marcus Osborne on board 1 (their game is pictured above, alongside the Oozeerally-Andrews encounter). Another Kingston stalwart, Nick Grey, was battling hard on board 6 against South Norwood captain Simon Lea, and certainly didn’t look to be worse. At that stage, a drawn match looked perfectly plausible.
It was not to be, however. Nick went wrong in the endgame as time started to take its toll. “I was playing for a win ,” he explained afterwards, “and missed the fact that liquidating both h-pawns would have been drawing.” Even worse was David Rowson’s fate on board 1, where it was the familiar story of first the win going west and then the draw slipping away as well.
David’s game with Marcus Osborne was a very classy one up to the moment when the Kingston board 1 blundered. Marcus played a Sicilian Defence, to which David responded imaginatively, leading to this position after 15 moves:
The engine has a slight preference for Black here, but the white pawn lodged on e6 is potentially awkward for Black, and David made the running hereafter, winning the exchange after a slip by Marcus and having this objectively “won” position after 28 moves:
Of course the notion of an objectively won middlegame position is ludicrous, as the Dutch grandmaster Hein Donner noted in a famous remark: “I love all positions. Give me a difficult positional game, I’ll play it. Give me a bad position, I’ll defend it. Openings, endgames, complicated positions, and dull, drawn positions, I love them all and will give my best efforts. But totally winning positions I cannot stand.”
It is when they have “won” positions that many chess players (at club level at least) start feeling queasy, while the player with the “lost” position has nothing to lose, can throw caution to the wind and will draw on all sorts of resources to try to equalise. Marcus is just such a player and he showed his resilience in the rest of the game.
David, perhaps subconsciously relaxing in that “won position”, blundered to give back the exchange and lead to a level position, but after that, as David later, said Marcus showed his ability and played the final part of the game well. Here is the denouement from move 34.
A desperate finish for David who, behind his brave facade, was very disappointed by the result. Chess is cruel – a conclusion we could draw after pretty much every match we play. But we fight on. We are not quite clear of the relegation mire yet (see table below, under the match scorecard), but once our relegation rivals South Norwood 1 and Coulsdon 2 have played on 15 April we will know exactly what we have to do against Ashtead 1 and Surbiton 1, the two strongest teams in the division. A narrow win for Coulsdon 2 would leave us having to accumulate a handful of game points to survive. We can surely manage that … can’t we?
Stephen Moss, Kingston 2 captain in Surrey division 2
South Norwood 1 v Kingston 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at West Thornton Community Centre, Thornton Heath on 4 April 2024
My wins against players rated higher than me have been few and far between this season, so please indulge me by allowing this win against Oliver Weiss (ECF 1915) to be included in our annotated games list. My play on this evening when we had two teams playing at distant South Norwood was far from perfect – insipid opening, wrong-headed guess in a key middlegame position – and my opponent greatly helped me at the sudden denouement, but generally I thought I played OK and at least I had a few modestly creative ideas (albeit at times misguided ones). And I do need all the encouragement I can get after recent over-the-board setbacks.
The photograph above shows Kingston 4 player Leon Mellor-Sewell watching intently as he waits for his opponent to arrive. Kingston 4 beat South Norwood 3 by 4.5-1.5 in a Surrey division 5 match. Kingston 2, for whom I was on board 5, lost 5-2 to a highly motivated South Norwood 1 team. The threat of relegation from Surrey division 2 had encouraged them to get their strongest side out. We are also in the division 2 relegation mix and every game point counts, which was another reason I felt pleased by my much-needed win.
