Surbiton A v Kingston A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at Fircroft, Surbiton on 25 March 2026

After our close, tense and controversial match against Hammersmith, I was hoping and expecting a simple and stress-free evening out on our trip away to Surbiton, especially as they put out a team missing Mark Josse, their best player. But things did not turn out quite as I planned.

The first game to finish was the board 1 clash between David Maycock and Altaf Chaudhry. This was another crushing win by David, essentially decided by an opening error by Black:

Another crisp game by Maycock. His handling of the white pieces in the Sicilian Defence is both an object lesson and a standing reproach to all those club players who wheel out their tired Alapins, their pusillanimous Bb5s and their lame Morras “to avoid the theory”. Play the main lines for God’s sake.

The next game to finish was on board 4, where John Hawksworth had the black pieces against David Scott. Readers who have been following John’s progress as he returns to the fray will not be surprised to learn that the game ended in a draw – he is difficult to beat. He played (my favourite) Hedgehog Defence, and it seemed to me he went wrong at one point in the opening. But he recovered to reach equality, and the game ended in an almost-forced threefold repetition on move 28.

On board 6 Peter Andrews had very kindly stepped in at late notice to replace an unwell Julian Way. His reward was to get Black against Nick Faulks, a frequent opponent. On Peter’s own account he was surprised in the opening, when Faulks played:

That made it 1.5-1.5 – not the score I had been hoping for. And it got worse. On board 2, Peter Lalić was Black against Joseph Morrison. Peter’s latest opening nonsense involves advancing all the pawns in front of his own king, so as to create weaknesses. The flaw in this strategy is that the weaknesses are in his own position. Morrison reacted to the provocation quite sensibly, and in fact missed a chance to obtain an advantage in the early middlegame. The game was agreed a draw on move 32 in a blocked position in which neither side could make much progress. 2-2.

On board 3 I was playing the up-and-coming Joshua Pirgon. I obtained no advantage with White against his unusual line in the French, and after 19 moves we reached the following equal position:

That made the score 3-2, but with one game remaining we still hadn’t won the match. Fortunately the one game remaining was Peter Hasson v Liam Bayly on board 5. Peter is extremely strong with White, and this was a beautiful positional game.

So we scraped a 4-2 win. It means we have put some clear blue water between ourselves and our rivals in Thames Valley division 1, but the narrow margin of victory against the team currently sitting at the bottom of the league table shows that there is still no room for smug complacency.

Peter Large is Kingston captain in Thames Valley division 1