Kingston C v Richmond E, Thames Valley League division X match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 3 February 2025
This was a very good victory for Jon Eckert’s Kingston C side. Sean Tay won smoothly on board 1, winning decisive material advantage and neutralising his opponent’s passed pawn. Jaden Mistry, with rook and pawn against two pieces, drew on board 2. Mark Sheridan won well on board 3, and Rob Taylor squeezed out a rook and pawn endgame on board 4. That made the margin of victory a comfortable one – 3.5-0.5. Captain Eckert, meanwhile, was winning his own game against Hounslow B to complete a very satisfying evening.
Ealing B v Kingston B, Thames Valley League division 2 match played at Actonians Sports Club, London W5 on 27 January 2025
This was a very tight, competitive match, and that Kingston B managed to run out 4-2 winners was a great achievement. We are now 5/5 in division 2 of the Thames Valley League, though with nine fixtures still to go we should not yet put the champagne on ice.
We were admittedly helped by the fact that Ealing lost their board 6 very late due to illness. Their substitute Aleksei Garifov performed well in the opening and was holding his own, but then misplaced his queen and omitted to castle. Making his debut for Kingston, Homayoon Froogh (father of Zubair, who was playing on board 5) needed no second invitation to launch a decisive tactic.
The Ealing player did not choose the best continuation, suffered even heavier material loss and resigned after 28 moves. A winning debut for Homayoon and an encouraging early lead for Kingston. The other five games, however, were fiercely contested and went on late into the night.
Froogh Junior had a fascinating struggle with Sagnik Chatterjee on board 5. This game was pivotal to the match because if could have gone either way deep into the rook and pawn endgame with which it concluded. The position shown below is probably drawn and there were points earlier where Black could surely have drawn by repetition.
But Sagnik is young, the game had been very competitive and the juices were flowing. He banked everything on his a-pawn and rushed his king over to support it. But he underestimated the power of d6, defended inaccurately in a time scramble and was overwhelmed by White’s kingside pawns before he could get his own passed pawn home.
Frooghs 2 Ealing 0. But Ealing were winning on board 3, where Jack Sheard was getting the better of Jon Eckert. The position below is level, but Jon, playing White, then goes wrong and the game is lost in the space of a few moves.
Alicia Mason, with Black, played well against the higher-rated Matthew Georgiou and in the position below has excellent drawing chances, but, with time starting to become a concern, one tiny slip put her on the back foot and she never quite recovered.
Alicia, who returned from the US last year, is taking her chess very seriously and knows that the secret to improvement is to learn from your losses, so what did she learn from this one? “This was a frustrating game to lose,” she admitted afterwards, “especially since the blunder came right at the moment where I missed the opportunity to get an advantage. The main thing I want to take away from this game is how I handle the clock. I want to avoid the temptation of rushing my moves in order to stay ahead on the clock if my opponent is short of time, and to remember to check all the forcing moves, whatever the situation. Had I done that here, I would have found the capture on a3 followed by d5, which I realised I’d missed as soon as I played 26…Nc7.”
The match hinged on boards 1 and 2: Peter Andrews with White on 1 against Ealing captain Xavier Cowan, and John Bussmann, who is showing renewed enthusiasm and good form this season, against Hristo Colov on 2. The latter was a high-class affair, but, as so often in evening club chess, tiredness and clock pressure decided the outcome, with White blundering horribly (is that a tautology?).
So to the battle of the board ones – a repeat of the same match-up in the reverse fixture when Kingston were at home last November, and with the same result – wily veteran Andrews got the better of the young gun Cowan. We pick up the game on Black’s 16th move when, says Peter, “d5, which I expected, blew up the centre in my favour. I guess Black felt under a little pressure as I had gained space without allowing him chances.” The analysis below is Peter’s.
Peter rushed off for his customary post-game whisky to calm his shredded nerves and that was that. A very good 4-2 win away against a capable side. If we are not careful we might have to start considering our chances of being promoted to Thames Valley division 1, and pose the question of whether we would want two competing teams in the top division. But not yet: there are still many battles ahead.
Kingston A v Hammersmith A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 27 January 2025
In the past two seasons Hammersmith have been our main rivals for the Thames Valley league title. In 2022/23 we were running neck and neck until we beat them at their venue, and last season they looked to have it in the bag before they slipped up mid-season and we showed our mettle by finishing with a run of wins. This year we have seen our squad boosted even further by several very strong additions, to the remarkable extent that our line-up for this match had international masters on boards 1 and 6. However, although we comfortably outrated Hammersmith’s team on the night, they were still strong and a hard-fought match ensued.
The first result came quite quickly: a very nice, deceptively smooth win for Peter Lalić (pictured above) on board 5 against Paul Kennelly. Having made his trademark pawn sacrifice in the opening, he developed quickly, gained the two bishops and had White’s king in the centre as a target. In the position below his opponent played 14. Rhd1? 14. h3 was correct to stop Black’s next move, which forces the position open.
The second game to finish, on board 6, also resulted in a Kingston win for IM John Hawksworth against Robin Sarfas. From a Slav Defence this position was reached:
So Kingston had a two-point lead, but the remaining four games were all hard to call and, in two cases at least, very tense. The board 1 game saw IM Peter Large play the Hedgehog Defence against Alistair Hill, reaching this position:
It’s hard to know what to focus on when describing the board 2 game between David Maycock and Zain Patel (not named in the scoresheet below as Hammersmith do not appear officially to have registered him with the Thames Valley League), as it had so many twists and turns, with creativity – and, as time trouble set in, errors – running wild on the part of both players. From an unusual variation of the Ruy Lopez, this position was reached:
This meant the score was now Kingston 3 Hammersmith 1, and we only needed a draw from the remaining two games to win the match.
The board 3 game, in striking contrast to Maycock v Patel, was a close positional contest from a Caro-Kann Defence Exchange Variation. Supratit Banerjee and Carsten Pedersen manoeuvred carefully until a rook and knight ending was reached with all the pawns on the same side of the board. Eventually, in the position below, the players agreed a draw, and Kingston had the half-point we needed to win the match.
The final game to finish was the board 4 encounter between Ash Stewart, with White, and Hammersmith captain Bajrush Kelmendi. Ash established an advantage from the position below, which at first sight looks a little worrisome for White:
Thus a hard-fought match resulted in a win for Kingston by 4-2. A very professional performance, one might say, not conceding a single game, even though there was no shortage of tension. As it happens, our next Thames Valley League Division 1 match is at Hammersmith’s venue on Thursday 13 February, so the battle will continue. Having won all five of our Thames Valley matches so far, we are three points ahead of Hammersmith with a game in hand, but there are still more than half the fixtures left to play – and look what happened to Hammersmith last season after they had made all the early running. We take nothing for granted.
David Rowson, KIngston captain in Thames Valley League division 1
