Wimbledon 1 v Kingston 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at St Winefride’s Church Hall, Wimbledon on 21 November 2024

If we had been offered a 4-3 loss at the start of this match, we would have thought that perfectly acceptable. Wimbledon are a first-division team who find themselves stuck (almost certainly only for this season) in division 2 of the Surrey League. We were heavily outrated, yet came tantalisingly close to at least drawing the match. With a fair wind, we might even have won it. So in the end a 4-3 defeat actually came as a disappointment.

Ye Kyaw, in his debut season for Kingston, had a tremendous draw on board 6, where he was outrated by 270 points by Owen Phillips. Charlie Cooke also had a good draw against Anik Fonseka on board 7. Alan Scrimgour and Ian Heppell reached an early draw on board 4, and Kingston president John Foley also made a draw on board 3 with White against promising Wimbledon junior Shahvez Ali, though when he analysed the game later he realised he had had a winning opportunity, as he explains in the annotation below.

So 2-2, with three games in progress. Luca Buanne (pictured above) was better against Peter Lalić, our first-division bulwark moonlighting for Wimbledon in Div 2, on board 1; Will Taylor a little worse against Russell Picot on board 2; Jon Eckert certainly no worse and possibly with a slight edge against Neil Cannon on board 5. Against all the odds, we really thought we were going to get away with this.

Luca played superbly and converted the better position he had out of the opening in excellent style, thwarting all Peter’s trickery.

Luca’s victory was countered by Russell Picot’s win with White for Wimbledon on board 2 against Will Taylor. Will had the better of the opening against Russell’s Catalan and established a small plus, but Russell equalised and then pounced on a tiny slip by Will to win a pawn. That was enough. Russell made the pawn count in an endgame with bishops of the same colour.

That left the score at 3-3, with Jon Eckert seemingly having good chances to draw the match by holding on board 5, but he was in time trouble and went wrong in the position below.

Stephen Moss, Kingston club captain