Kingston Chess Club serves the chess-playing community on the borders between south-west London and Surrey. We are one of the longest-established clubs in the UK and we believe we are also amongst the friendliest. We had a spectacular season in 2024/25 winning eight competitions which is unprecedented. 

Where we meet

We meet every Monday at the Richard Mayo Centre which is part of the United Reformed Church in central Kingston. The venue is convenient for trains and buses. Alas we are not on the tube.

The venue comprises meeting rooms which we hire from the church. The space is used by different community groups every day.  This is the same venue where we held Kingston RapidPlay tournaments before Covid and where we held the Fourth Kingston Invitational tournament and Open tournament in 2025. 

We moved here in September 2025 having been at the Willoughby Arms (47 Willoughby Road, Kingston KT2 6LN) for a number of years.

Matches and organised events usually get under way at 7.30pm.

Visitors are welcome

Club officials are usually there a little earlier to welcome members, play some social chess and start preparing the rooms for whatever activity is planned for that evening. The club meets and plays competitive matches and social chess in a large room downstairs – the Richard Mayo Hall. There is a separate room for post mortem analysis.  Parents can wait in the foyer where a kettle is available to make hot refreshments. Whatever your chess strength, do come along and give it a try.

Competitive and social chess

We play competitive chess in both the Surrey and Thames Valley leagues (see below for details), but we also strive to offer social chess and a variety of activities – simultaneous displays by titled players, talks, demonstrations, study groups, mentoring by strong players – that encourage newcomers, allow them to explore chess and help make them better, more complete players. We don’t believe that sitting around playing endless blitz is either fun or instructive. It has its place, but we want to offer something more structured and more progressive. We also don’t believe in a club that is run for strong players who just want to play match chess. At Kingston, everyone who comes along and makes a contribution is equal, whether you’re a master-strength player or someone who became fascinated by chess because you saw The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix. We want our strong players to be fulfilled and our new players to be fascinated – and over time to become highly competitive and creative players.

The club aims to strike a balance between competitive match chess and social chess. It accepts that match chess is at the heart of the life of a chess club, but insists that social players must not feel excluded and supports the idea of joining league feeder divisions intended to give new players match-playing experience, with its requirements to score and observe certain playing conventions. Match chess should not be a closed circle, and where new players want to become tournament players – which means joining the English Chess Federation, learning how to keep a score of their game and transitioning from the mentality of five-minute blitz to a couple of hours of deep thought – we promise to help them.

Recent club successes

The club has been on a successful run in recent times. We won the national team championships known as 4NCL (4 Nations Chess League) when it was online in 2020. In the 2021/22 season, as chess (and the country generally) emerged from the pandemic, we entered five competitions and won all of them. We are most proud to have won the Alexander Cup, the Surrey open team championship, for the first time since 1975/76. Also in the knockout format, we won the Lauder Trophy, the Surrey competition with the teams constrained to a maximum total rating. In the leagues, we dominated Surrey League division 2, winning the Beaumont Cup. We also won division 2 of the Thames Valley League with two matches to spare. We were fortunate to win division 4 of the Surrey League by a margin of half a game point and gain the Centenary Trophy.

The 2022/23 season was even more successful, historic even. The club achieved a unique “Quadruple” – winning the Surrey League for the first time since 1975, the Thames Valley League for the first time since 1984, the Alexander Cup for the second year in a row and the Thames Valley Knockout for the first time since 2012. This incredible Quadruple is not just unique to Kingston. As far as we know, no club has ever managed to win the two first division titles and the two premier knockout trophies in one season. It was a remarkable performance, and left us wondering what we should aim for now. We were at the summit, peering down slightly anxiously.

What do you do when you have done everything? Incredibly, we went further in the 2025 season and won eight trophies:

 

THAMES VALLEY
Thames Valley Division 1 (Kingston A), 6 boards
Thames Valley Division 1 (Kingston B), 6 boards
Thames Valley knockout

SURREY
Surrey Trophy – Surrey League Divison 1, 8 boards
Alexander Cup – Surrey team knockout, 10 boards
Lauder Trophy – Surrey team knockout, 6 boards, ratings limited
Thorp Trophy – 1 day team tournament, 4 boards, two rating levels

SOUTHERN COUNTIES
London Team Champions, 4 boards, ratings limited

We also came 7th in the 4 Nations Chess League where we were up against funded teams with interntional grandmasters.

 

We encourage you to come along

So please come along to the Willoughby, where you will receive a warm welcome. Matches against other clubs, if we have one that evening, usually start at 7.30pm, as do talks, mini-tournaments and other events, but even when a match is in progress there will be an opportunity to play social chess – quietly in the analyis room (because formal matches do need tranquillity). If you arrive a little before 7.30pm you may find one of the club officials already in residence, ready to welcome members and preparing the playing room for whatever activity is planned that evening.

A buoyant, booming club

We don’t have all the answers to creating a buoyant, inclusive chess club – in an era when clubs generally have been in decline as internet chess has taken over and work patterns have changed – but we are looking for them and would love you to join our quest. Veteran chess-watcher Leonard Barden said in his Financial Times column that the Kingston club was “booming”. This proved to be accurate during our 150th anniversary in 2025.

You can follow and contact the club via its Twitter account. But better still, come down to the venue one Monday and start playing.

Level of play

We cater for all levels of play from beginner to international master. The annotated games on this website give you an idea of the thoughts that go through the heads of our players. We encourage each of our members to write up at least one of their better games during the season.

Juniors

We accept juniors on the condition that they are accompanied by a parent or responsible adult for safeguarding. We do not impose any entry restrictions on any junior older than 16. We have run a junior section, the Kingston Chess Academy, with DBS-checked, qualified chess teachers and will be restarting this again once our move to the new venue has settled down.

Leagues

Surrey League
We play teams from around the county at home or away. We run Kingston teams in the Surrey Trophy (ie first division), the Beaumont Cup (second division), the Centenary Trophy (fourth division) and the Minor Trophy (fifth division), as well as in two knockout competitions – the Alexander Cup and the Lauder Trophy. Matches take place from September through to May, leaving the summer free for social chess and special events.

Thames Valley League
We run Kingston teams in the first and second divisions of this league – and in Div X, a training league for new players. Matches take place in the Thames Valley area from September to May.

4NCL

We run two teams in the Four Nations Chess League (4NCL). Our first team comprises eight players and is in the second division. Our second team is in the third division. The team is a joint venture with Chess in Schools and Communities (CSC).

Governance

The Club has a democratic constitution: Kingston Chess Club Constitution. The Club is run by a Committee comprising the President, the Chair, the Secretary and the Treasurer. In addition, several club officers are responsible for their specific areas. All roles are voluntary and unpaid.

Membership fees for 2024-25

The annual club subscription is £50. This is a low annual cost for hobby. The money goes towards rent, running the club, subscriptions, equipment and league fees.

For details on how to join, go to our membership page