Kingston v Epsom, Lauder Trophy semi-final played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 16 March 2026

The Lauder Trophy is a knockout competition in which the total rating of the six-board team cannot exceed 10,500, ie an average of 1750 per board. The rating limit makes it likely that the matches are close, although it gives a small advantage to clubs with large player pools, giving them the best chance of getting as close as possible to the rating limit without exceeding it, and those with plenty of underrated players, especially fast- rising juniors, so as to get the biggest strength bang for the rating buck. This semi-final illustrated the point well: Kingston total rating 10,489, Epsom 10,479, but the latter had several juniors and no one older than their [to my elderly eyes] still youthful president, Marcus Gosling.

Kingston had White on the odd boards, and all the games were indeed well-contested. Epsom struck the first blow on board 6, where KIngston’s Rob Taylor got an advantage in the opening against Arjun Chaturvedi but lost the exchange when trying to regroup his attack. His position was good enough to prevent much progress, but White was eventually able to return the exchange for a pawn and win the bishop ending a pawn up.

Around the same time, Tom Mayers went down to Ethan Bogerd on board 3. Tom had won a pawn in the opening, for which Ethan had some initiative but probably not enough. Tom got active while retaining the pawn, and I was optimistic for a while, but an exchange went missing in the complications and Ethan finished off ruthlessly. Ethan had also won both his games against Kingston in the Thorpe Trophy two days earlier. Advantage Epsom, but the very promising Kingston newcomer Constantin Liesch then struck back on board 5.

On board 4, Seth Warren with Black against Toby Eaves had been slightly better in the early middle game. He then dropped a pawn but reached an ending with bishops of opposite colours which was objectively drawn. However, we have learned from one of our top players that positions in which only one side has winning chances, however slight, and can maintain them without risk can be humanly difficult to defend.

That left boards 1 and 2 in play, on both of which we were substantially outrated. Earlier on, I had not been optimistic about either. On board 1, Stephen Lovell (pictured above, left foreground) became a little cramped with White against James Allison, and although the position was sufficiently blocked that it was hard for Black to make progress, Allison eventually made a breakthrough on the queenside to win material, and found a trick to rebut Stephen’s attempted kingside counter. In the end Stephen lost on time, but the game was gone anyway.

On board 2, I was worried that Xavier Cowan’s knight on e4 had no obvious escape route and that Xavier would need tactics to prevent Marcus Gosling from eventually playing f3 to win it. That created tension, and characteristically caused Xavier to burn all his time, so that by the time the game exploded he was more or less on the increment. But with no time to think he produced a fireworks display.

A shame that however crushing a win may be it only counts one point, but nevertheless a nice way to end our involvement in this year’s competition. Well done to Epsom on their 4-2 victory. They now face Dorking in the final.

Peter Andrews is Kingston captain in the Lauder Trophy and chair of the club