Kingston 2 v Guildford 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 2 December 2024

On the same night that Mark Sheridan slipped, fell and ended up in A&E, missing the match at Epsom, the Kingston 2 team did the same thing collectively (metaphorically speaking) against Guildford 2. There is no other word for our performance but debacle, and I would say the Kingston 2 captain’s place is now in serious jeopardy. (I would say that except the Kingston captain is me.) This loss drags us into the Div 2 relegation mire and might even make us favourites for the drop. It was very ugly.

We had lost two strong players in the 24 hours before the match – one to illness, the other to a bereavement – but the news that Guildford were defaulting bottom board seemed to make our task easier and we still had a rating advantage. But we just didn’t gel.

John Foley, kindly replacing one of the indisposed players at short notice, rushed from a teaching stint at the Kingston Chess Academy, but was exhausted and happy to play out a fairly anaemic draw with White against Guildford captain Malcolm Twigger-Ross. At the time, that result seemed OK, but what followed made it look anything but.

Jon Eckert would be the first to admit he has been struggling for form so far this season, and things went badly for him with Black against Richard Duncalfe on board 5. They played out an interesting line of the French Defence, but the Guildford player did well to accumulate a succession of small advantages and, faced with a losing endgame, Jon resigned. It was a similar story on board 6, where Tony Garrood’s killer bishops – working in perfect harmony – overwhelmed Ye Kyaw’s defences.

The high spot of the evening – the sole bright light in fact – was John Bussmann’s smooth win against Anton Barysenko’s Grünfeld Defence. John is having an excellent season so far and is now pressing for a first-team place – watch this space! It’s really important to have him back and firing, after a long-term injury kept him out for most of last season.

Peter Andrews was up against old foe Seb Galer on board 2 – a critical battle with Peter playing White. Lose this and we really were in trouble. Seb went on the attack in the opening, and by move 10 Peter was already up against it. Peter takes up the story from the position below (one of the nice things about him is that, win or lose, he will cheerfully annotate the game and try to learn from it – a lesson to us all!)

This defeat – surely the result of being under attack for a prolonged period, surviving it, relaxing and then blundering because the worst seemed to have passed – made it 3.5-2.5 to Guildford. They could not lose the match, but we could still draw it – if we could win on board 1, where the estimable Will Taylor had Black against Matthew Dishman.

Matthew had sac’d a pawn for what he hoped was an initiative, but his kingside assault had come to nothing and now Will had queen and four pawns against queen and three. Will was pushing and pushing for the win, but he was also playing on the 10-second increment, whereas his opponent had five minutes left. This imbalance proved fatal.

At one point Will was down to a single second, but he punched his clock just in time. When he went down to the minimum again, however, he was less fortunate and his clock ticked down to zero before he made his umpteenth queen move. A horrible moment. Poor Will had lost a game in which he deserved at least a draw and we had lost the match 4.5-2.5. Now an attritional winter trying to fight off relegation from Surrey Div 2 awaits.

But perhaps I should not despair too much. Worried that Will would be losing sleep over the disaster and keen to send him my commiserations, I sent a supportive email soon after the conclusion the match. “Thanks for asking,” he responded, “but I’m fine. It’s just a game of chess.” Am eminently sensible and rational attitude, and one we sleep-deprived obsessives would do well to replicate. Whatever legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly might have said, it really is a game – and not a matter of life and death.

Stephen Moss, Kingston club captain

Epsom 4 v Kingston 6, Surrey League division 5 match played at the Epsom Christian Fellowship, Epsom on 2 December 2024

This was one of those unfortunate evenings that one prefers to forget. Mark Sheridan, who was due to play for the Kingston team, slipped, injured his leg and was in A&E when he should have been battling it out on board 6. Apologies to Epsom for the default.

Losing a board to a default was critical in a well-contested match. David Bickerstaff and Sean Tay lost on boards 2 and 3, but Jaden Mistry (pictured above, in red top, playing in an earlier match) won well on board 4; captain Ed Mospan continued his run of good form with a solid draw; and it was reassuring to see Adam Nakar back playing again and drawing with wily Epsom veteran Michael Wickham on top board.

The best news of all was that Mark was discharged sore but with no broken bones and planned to make an immediate return to the fray. Thanks as ever to the players for making the long trek to Epsom on a chilly December evening.

Stephen Moss, Kingston club captain

Kingston 1 v Guildford 1, Surrey League division 1 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 25 November 2024

To judge by the teams Guildford have been able to field this season, they will be close rivals in this season’s Surrey competitions. Kingston had a rating advantage on seven of the eight boards, but many of the differences were small and easily offset by the advantage of playing White. I was under too much pressure in my own game to see much of the others. Spectators reported a tense match, and in each of the games on boards 4 to 7 we had losing positions at one point. We eventually scored 2.5 points from those four games, so the final result gave a rather misleading impression of the course of the match.

When title contenders meet, the first goal is often crucial, and Peter Large scored it against FM Jon Ady, recently returned to England from Hong Kong. As the game emerged into the endgame, Peter had a useful initiative. That may have induced Jon to grab a hot pawn, leading quickly to his knight become trapped on one side of the board and his king on the other.

Luca Buanne, with Black on board 5, came under pressure out of the opening. His opponent missed a sequence which would have transitioned to a winning ending, and Luca needed no second invitation to activate and equalise.

Next to finish was Mike Healey on board 4 against Guildford’s new captain James Toon. Mike came out of the opening two pawns down and objectively lost, but with the kind of wild position in which a game can turn quickly. That is what happened in this position after White’s 23^rd move.

In the rare moments I could spare from my own game, I had followed some of the twists and turns of John Foley’s game on board 8, next to me. With kings castled on opposite sides, John had built a strong attack using the open h-file. But Black had sacrificed a pawn to block that, and then changed the nature of the game by giving up two rooks for queen and pawn.  Both sides had attacking chances after White had played move 38, but Black’s response led to defeat.

On board 7, the computer evaluation of my position proved later to be roughly equal most of the way through, but I had been short of space, which usually makes it harder to play. In the position below, my opponent missed an opportunity. We both missed that White could have played 22. Ng6, with a big advantage; to save the exchange, Black must play 22 …fxg6 after which 23. Qxe6+ regains the piece with Black’s kingside wrecked. I am sure we would both have seen that had Ng6 captured a pawn against a kingside fianchetto rather than being a sacrifice on an empty square. Then, just before a draw was agreed, it was my turn to miss a winning opportunity, after White’s 29th move, when Re4 would give Black a big advantage.

That gave Kingston a 4-1 lead, or “dormie three” in golf parlance. But it was hard to assess the remaining games. Julian Way’s game on board 6 probably had the most reversals. Julian had come out much worse from the opening. Facing a kingside attack on his castled king, he responded with a kingside attack on Black’s castled king. At one point, both sides could have lost a piece to pins down the g-file in quick succession. After Black’s 31st move, this was the position.

That half-point got us over the line. Could David Maycock or Peter Lalić (pictured above) add the extra point? David, playing Black against 2340-rated Gwilym Price and suffering the after-effects of a cold (though he would be the last person to make excuses), liked his position from the opening. The key position arose after White’s 18^th move.

In the encounter between Clive Frostick v Peter Lalić on board 3, unlike the other games in the match, there were no significant fluctuations in the advantage until after Black’s 31st move.

So we took the chequered flag, the spectators got their money’s worth, and Kingston have a good chance of being top of the Surrey League division 1 table at Christmas. But all the top teams, including ourselves, are stronger at home than away, so the trips to Epsom and Guildford in the spring will be serious challenges.

Peter Andrews, Kingston 1 captain in the Surrey League