Evening Standard 10th Islington Open played at the Islington Green Youth Centre, Prebend Street, London N1 on 20 December 1974
We don’t have many games of our long-time top Kingston board Ken Inwood. This is a notable game where Ken succumbed to the the dynamic Four Pawns Attack of Alekhine’s Defence. The game was originally published in Chess magazine in January 1975. It is sourced from John Saunders’ historic database resource for chess in England. The winner Stuart Fancy later moved to Papua New Guinea where he became a member of their Olympiad team.
Kingston C v Staines B, Thames Valley League division X match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 15 December 2025
This was a well-contested encounter between two evenly matched teams. Ed Mospan, deputising for Jon Eckert, captained and played on board 1, losing with Black to Alex McTavish. Nette Robinson, with White on board 4, levelled the score; Rob Taylor drew on board 2 with Paul Silvester, and the issue was decided in Staines’ favour on board 3, Rashvir Raikmo (again with White) beating Anqi Yang to give the match to Staines by 2.5-1.5.
The evening doubled as a fundraiser by Kingston Chess Club on behalf of the Princess Alice Hospice in Esher. Organised primarily by the ubiquitous Ed Mospan, this initiative raised a fantastic £1,600 for the hospice, through a combination of donations (usually for the opportunity to play a rated game on the night), bids to be involved in a training session with grandmaster Daniel King, and cake sales.
Many thanks to Ed and Genc Tasbasi for running the fundraiser, Daniel King for offering his expertise for free to the highest bidders in the training auction, and to Anqi Yang and Heather Warren for bringing along their wonderful home-made cakes. A memorable evening and exactly the type of community involvement for which we strive at Kingston.
Kingston 1 v Epsom 1, Surrey League division 1 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 8 December 2025
Epsom were worried enough about this match to use some disinformation tactics in advance – we had been led by our Epsom informant to believe that Graeme Buckley and Susan Lalić would not be in the line-up, but rather that they would feature an array of strong juniors. But it was only a minor surprise to find them entering the Richard Mayo Centre at about 7.20pm, and as it turned out it was not a failure to prepare for those two Masters which cost us the match, but rather a collapse on the lower boards.
Epsom had drafted in on board 2 Chris Russell, newish to Surrey but well established in leagues in central London, so no Lalić family clash. Susan Lalić had White on board 3 against fellow IM Peter Large, and that game was a fairly peaceful and quick draw. But the others all went the distance.
Peter Andrews got into early bother with White against talented Epsom junior Lev Razhnou. Photograph: Kyle Cajigas
My own game on board 8 against the fast-rising junior Lev Razhnou was an uphill struggle from early on which required my full attention, so the following account rests on the game scores rather than being able to report rising tension and depression through the evening.
The interest in my game lay in the evaluation of the position early and late on. Razhnou was tactically alert in the opening, and we soon reached the position in the diagram below in which I felt I was almost busted, affecting my mindset for the rest of the game.
I thought that I had done nobly to stay afloat as far as the position shown below after White’s 23rd move, and intermittent spectators felt the same.
Yet according to Stockfish, diagram 1 is only fractionally worse for White whereas soon after diagram 2 the roof fell in on the queenside. Black’s progress between the two diagrams came incrementally rather than in a stroke of brilliance on his part or incompetence on mine. Thereafter, I had some chance on the clock – he was down to three seconds at one point, and still thinking – but none on the board.
Wily veteran Robin Haldane. left. got the better of Peter Hasson with White on board 5. Photograph: Kyle Cajigas
Boards 4 and 5, Zain Patel with White v Allison and Peter Hasson with Black v Robin Haldane, were similar in that the Kingston player outrated their opponent, outplayed them in the first half of the game, and then managed to lose, Zain perhaps through complacency, deferring castling for too long, and Peter through an endgame error which must have reflected time pressure. Around the same time, David Rowson on board 7 seems to have agreed a draw in a winning endgame:
The game was agreed drawn here. But the evaluation is -6, ie Black is winning. As we have seen on other occasions, it can be hard for the side trying to win to find exact moves when time is short, whereas the losing side can just react. The technique is to use the bishop to control the long diagonal to the last black square in front of the pawn, ie a1 to h8, while the black king can prevent the white bishop from settling at a3. Note that it is more difficult to win such an ending when the passed pawn is a centre pawn, because then the weaker side has enough squares on the shorter diagonal to escape the king.
David Maycock forsook his usual fireworks and played a positional game à la Peter Lalić. Photograph: Kyle Cajigas
Things were going better on the top boards. On board 1, David Maycock beat Graham Buckley with Black, not with the usual attacking cascade, but in [Peter] Lalić fashion, heading for a queenless middle game and exploiting several tactical slips to win material.
On board 2, the man himself won another game in which his masterful endgame skills are instructive:
Jasper Tambini, in festive sweater, had a fleeting chance to win his game. Photograph: Kyle Cajigas
That win meant we had a chance to save a draw if Jasper Tambini, who had White, could beat Epsom president Marcus Gosling on board 6. He had one fleeting chance to do so, which both players had missed, and then lost by pressing too hard for the win in a drawn rook and pawn ending. This was the opportunity:
Epsom’s win throws the league wide open, with every team having lost at least one match, and we will need to be at full strength when we travel there on 30 March.
Peter Andrews captains Kingston’s first and second teams in the Surrey League
Two bonus pictures by Kyle Cajigas, who photographed the evening’s games for an art project on which he is working
Kingston 3 v Ashtead 2, Surrey League division 4 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 8 December 2025
This meeting in the Centenary Trophy, division 4 of the Surrey League, saw two relatively strong teams pitted against each other, and the 5-1 victory for Ed Mospan’s Kingston 3 side was a considerable achievement. A very welcome one, too, on a night when Kingston 1 suffered an unexpected and painful defeat to Epsom 1, the latest in a string of reverses for the club’s higher-rated teams.
Recent recruit Xavier Cowan (pictured above, foreground left), who is already doing great things at Kingston, beat Ashtead’s very capable Tom Barton with Black on board 1. The opening was a very interesting line of the Sicilian and in this position White has a healthy advantage, but he goes for a tactic which doesn’t quite work.
Homayoon Froogh continued his tremendous winning run with victory over Ashtead captain Bertie Barlow on board 2. He grabbed a pawn in the opening and, once White had made a couple of ill-advised trades, never looked back.
Martyn Jones drew with Black against the very experienced Adrian Waldock on board 3 – like Homayoon, Martyn is having a terrific spell – and I drew with White against Ashley Wilson on board 4. In time-honoured fashion, I missed a likely win because I omitted an important intermezzo in the position below.
That made it 3-1 to Kingston, and Genc Tasbasi and Dieter McDougall completed an emphatic win with victories in well-contested games on boards 5 and 6. It’s still early days of course, but with a team of this strength and confidence Kingston 3 could have a shot at winning the Centenary Trophy this season. Promotion would be useful as we have a lot of players who would benefit from games in division 3.
Hammersmith v Kingston A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at the Mindsports Centre, London W6 on 4 December 2025
Hammersmith fielded their strongest team so far this season and we were without several key players, so a 4-2 defeat was not surprising. Kingston captain Peter Large, who quite rightly demands very high standards, said it was a hammering, but I felt it was less emphatic than that: a chastening defeat which suggests that winning a fourth successive Thames Valley title this season will be far from easy. Trappy away visits to Ealing and Maidenhead beckon in the next month, and we will need to be at our most resilient.
John Foley, with Black on board 6, was blown away by Sergiy Teslya, who we discovered afterwards had prepared a line against John’s usually trusty Caro-Kann. There was nothing subtle about his kingside blitz, but it was mightily effective, producing this horrible position (for Black) and a quick finish.
On board 2, Peter Lalić had a short but intriguing draw with White against Fide master Michael Fernandez. When I looked at Peter’s position (see diagram below), I thought he had good attacking possibilities. White’s pieces are well coordinated and castling looks dangerous, so what does Black do?
On board 5, Peter Andrews had White against Maria Alexandra-Ciocan. It was a tight struggle, but after establishing a healthy advantage in the middle game Peter missed a winning chance on move 30. The annotations below are Peter’s.
Boards 3 and 4 were going less well for Kingston. Zain Patel had White against the experienced Alistair Hill on board 3, but it always felt as if he was a little behind after the opening, though he sought counterplay throughout. He came very close to building a powerful kingside attack, but was hampered by time trouble and eventually Ali was able to exchange queens, defuse the threats and establish a material advantage that led to White’s resignation. That made it 3-1 to Hammersmith and meant they could not now lose.
Jasper Tambini has been under the cosh and short of moves with Black on board 4 against Gaston Franco for some time, and at no point did it look likely that we would win this game, so defeat in the match was a near inevitability with half an hour of the three-hour session still left to play. Franco played a highly positional game and didn’t allow Jasper, who prefers a more tactical struggle, any oxygen. White won a pawn in the middle game and just squeezed, establishing a winning endgame. A very professional performance by a strong player.
It was left to Kingston captain Peter Large to put a respectable gloss on the scoreline. With Black on board 2 against Thomas Bonn’s Ruy Lopez, Peter ceded a pawn for an initiative, and there followed a tactically complicated struggle which could have gone either way.
That made the final result 4-2 to Hammersmith, who go top of the Thames Valley division 1 table ahead of Maidenhead. We are currently third but have games in hand, and in any case the season is still in its early stages. It does, though, look as if the battle for the title will be extremely hard fought, with any team able to beat any other and home advantage potentially counting for a lot. It promises to be very exciting … and extremely stressful. But we will give it our best shot in an effort to retain our title.
Kingston 2 v Surbiton 1, Surrey League division 2 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 1 December 2025
Having beaten Surbiton only 10 days earlier on their home ground, and with the likelihood that they would be weaker away from home, Kingston 2 approached this match with a degree of confidence. As we shall see, that confidence was justified on the ratings difference between the teams and on the run of play, but not in the final result.
For the fourth consecutive match, Kingston lost the toss in a seven-board Surrey Division 2 match, so having Black on four boards and White on three. Having an odd number of boards and a toss rather than predetermined colours which give a 50/50 split over the season does seem an anomaly. But we had overcome that disadvantage on the three previous occasions.
David Rowson quickly equalised with Black on board 1 against David Scott. Jaden Mistry, on board 7, reached what looked like a drawn rook and pawn ending in which his opponent Alexey Markov had a passed a-pawn but Jaden had a four to three majority on the kingside. Jaden pushed his majority and penetrated with his king, but perhaps pushed too hard for the win and went down to defeat. However, Homayoon Froogh soon netted the equaliser with a win on board 6 against Malcolm Groom. Having built up a strong and lasting kingside attack, he missed the chance of a spectacular sacrificial win here.
Instead, Homayoon took no chances and kept the pressure on, and was eventually rewarded when Black cracked and blundered a piece. 1-0
But there followed a series of disappointments in which, as football statisticians might say, expected goals failed to turn into the real thing. On board 5, Alan Scrimgour found a nice tactic to win a queen against Andrew Boughen.
With the white pieces on board 4, John Foley had found another of his trademark exchange sacrifices against Graham Alcock to reach a winning endgame. But a single mistake in the endgame cost the win.
My game with Black on board 3 against Nick Faulks was even worse. I have a substantial plus score against Nick, having a couple of times got away with murder, so he might regard this as evening up, but it was nevertheless galling with the match on the line.
That left Jasper Tambini (pictured above, right) needing to win with White on board 2 against Neil Davies to save the match. Having had his attacking chances resisted, the game came down to a bishops-of-opposite-colour ending with White a pawn up. One pawn is not usually sufficient, but Jasper outplayed his opponent in the blitz finish to create chances. The moves at the critical juncture were not recorded, but we believe the following position was reached.
Now 1. e7 drew, because after 1… Kd7 2. b7 Bxb7 3. Kxb7 h4, the black pawn reached h2 forcing Bxh2 and allowing Kxe7 before the white king could guard the e-pawn. Instead 1. b7 would have won, because the black king cannot easily get at the white bishop and pawn, and the white king can get to d5 to guard the e-pawn. Straightforward in the cold light of day, but not so easy when you are playing on the increment and your mind is scrambled after a tense three-hour struggle.
So a match which could easily have been won 5-2 had been lost 4-3. Taking the two matches against Surbiton together, it is still a decent effort to split the points with a first team, but it could so easily have been better.
Peter Andrews captains Kingston’s first and second teams in the Surrey League
Kingston 4 v Coulsdon 3, Surrey League division 5 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 1 December 2025
In a difficult week for Kingston – with defeats for the first team against Hammersmith and the second team against Surbiton – this victory for Kingston 4 against Coulsdon 3 in the Surrey Minor Trophy provided a chink of light. But it was mighty close against a young and enthusiastic Coulsdon team, with Kingston winning 3.5-2.5.
Alexander Chmelev, an excellent addition to the club this season, led the way with a win on board 1. Colin Lyle and Nette Robinson enjoyed good wins on boards 4 and 5, and it was left to David Shalom to secure the vital half-point with a draw on board 2. A great result for Ed Mospan and his team in an otherwise disappointing week for the club.
