Maidenhead A v Kingston A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at St Luke’s Community Hall, Maidenhead on 13 January 2025
It is a truth universally acknowledged that half the battle when it comes to winning away chess matches on winter evenings is getting a full team to the venue. This is particularly the case when it comes to Maidenhead (or South Norwood, where the second team ventured this same week). So the fact that six players, one unwell and one only 11 years old, made it to a church hall in distant Berkshire was a very good start. Three of us, very kindly driven there by Stephen Moss, arrived 10 minutes late due to traffic problems, but the Maidenhead captain, Nigel Smith, very sportingly did not start the clocks until we had sat down.
Maidenhead, like some of our other recent opponents, were surprisingly weaker than expected, especially given that they were playing at home. We, on the other hand, were near full strength, bolstered by the presence of Supratit Banerjee on board 3. How important this was rapidly became clear when, after less than an hour’s play, Supratit’s opponent resigned, after going wrong in a tactically complicated position, the kind of position where Supratit seems completely at home. At this point, after just seven moves, Black is already under pressure from the pin on the f6 knight:
On board 2 a Nimzowitsch-Larsen Attack led to a wild position. Things took off from here when David Maycock played the provocative 9…g5:
On board 5 John Hawksworth was consolidating a positional advantage. He commented: “My opponent Tony Milnes played an unusual combination of the Dutch and the Bogo-Indian. I didn’t know the theory, but got a pleasant position playing natural moves. He misplaced his knight with 17…Nb7, which I could completely neutralise with 18.b4!” This gave the position below:
John’s win made the score 3-0 to Kingston. In my own game on board 6, everything also appeared to be going swimmingly as my opponent allowed me to win two pawns early on:
The board 4 game had seen manoeuvring in the centre and on the queenside, with neither player gaining much advantage, until the following position was reached. At this point Charles Bullock had about three minutes to Peter Lalić’s one and a half, but Peter thrives in such situations and he was the one who was pressing.
This made the score 4.5-0.5, with the top-board contest still outstanding. From a Caro-Kann Defence Peter Large and his young opponent, Bohdan Terler, reached this position:
With all the games completed (but the long journey home still in front of the Kingston players), Kingston had chalked up another convincing Thames Valley League division 1 victory. Our record so far this season is played four, won four, with 20.5 game points out of a possible 24. However, we still have eight matches to play, and our next two may well be crucial in deciding whether we retain the title, as we face Hammersmith home and away.
David Rowson, Kingston A captain in the Thames Valley League
David Rowson recounts a visit to Kingston by the great José Raúl Capablanca in 1919, two years before he became world champion, and shows two of the games he played in a 40-board simultaneous display
Like most chess clubs, Kingston from time to time invites leading players to give simultaneous displays. Last summer, for example, our newly entitled grandmaster (then still an IM) Ameet Ghasi, defeated all his challengers, and other strong club members, such as Peter Lalić, David Maycock and Vladimir Li, have performed almost as spectacularly.
Much of Kingston’s remote history (ie pre-the 1970s) is obscure, as few records have survived, but some accounts of past simuls do sometimes emerge from research or are even recalled by the participants. In 1975 Leonard Barden gave an exhibition as part of the club’s centenary celebrations, and the scores of the draws achieved by the two Bills, Waterton and Booth, are on the club website.
Decades before that, in 1934, the London Evening News reported that R P Michell, the club president, “is giving a simultaneous display on the condition that the loser of each game shall make a contribution to the funds. Mr Michell, too, will ‘pay up’ for every game he loses and also for his share of every drawn game … Another display on similar conditions will be given by Mr R N Coles, the club secretary.”
It is not known how much members had to contribute to play against the starriest simultaneous performer in the club’s history, but whatever it was, it must have been worth it for the experience, as the player in question was José Raúl Capablanca (pictured above). Although still two years away from winning the title of world champion from Emanuel Lasker, he was already generally considered to be the strongest player in the world. The club was then known as the Thames Valley Chess Club. The event took place at an unrecorded venue in Kingston on 29 October 1919, and the results are included in this list of Capablanca’s simultaneous displays by the British Chess Magazine.
If these figures are accurate, it seems that the Kingston players performed better than most of Capablanca’s other opponents, though the record of the first group of Dubliners is the most impressive. What was it like to face Capablanca over the board? A report about the Guildford event in the Surrey Times for 7 November 1919 describes him as having “a quiet unostentatious manner. During the progress of the games he rarely spoke to an opponent. Before making a move he invariably glanced at his opponent as if reading his thoughts.”
Edward Winter, on his Chess History website, quotes from the December 1919 Chess Amateur: “Unusual interest was aroused amongst Kingston chess players when Señor Capablanca, the world’s champion [sic], paid a visit to Kingston under the auspices of the Thames Valley Chess Club … Prior to the play, Señor Capablanca was entertained to dinner by the committee, the Rev. Father O’Sullivan, vice-president, occupying the chair…”
Father O’Sullivan, who was the Catholic parish priest of New Malden and the chess correspondent for the Tablet, distinguished himself by drawing with Capablanca. This was the game:
Father O’Sullivan’s 22 November 1919 column in the Tablet reported: “At a simultaneous (40 boards) display given by Capablanca last week, under the auspices of the Thames Valley Chess Club, Father Morgan, of Ashford, Middlesex [Edward Winter gives his name as Reverend W Morgan], put up an excellent fight [as Black]. The game went over 40 moves. After White’s 15th move, the position was as shown in this diagram:”
So it appears that two of the participants in the simul were priests. In the same report Father O’Sullivan is probably referring in a covert way to himself when he writes: “I shall be able to give next week a lively and highly interesting game which a Southwark Catholic drew recently with Capablanca. The game will be given with many notes, which should be of great help to novices and players of moderate strength.” However, as Edward Winter notes, this game was not published in the Tablet at the time. It did eventually appear in the chess column written by Father O’Sullivan’s successor, D M Davey, on 20 August 1949.
Sadly, I have been unable to discover anything more about Capablanca’s visit to Kingston in 1919. When we host Magnus Carlsen or Gukesh Dommaraju at the Willoughby Arms in the near future, we will make sure to preserve all the scores of the games.
David Rowson, Kingston A captain in the Thames Valley League
Ealing A v Kingston A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at Actonians Sports Club, London W5on 16 December 2024
On Monday 16 December we visited league leaders Ealing for our second Thames Valley division 1 match. Last season we had beaten them away, but lost to them at home, so we expected a tough contest. I was ready to enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of being a non-playing captain, able to observe the match without any responsibility for the moves, but in the event the closeness of the games meant that I felt almost as nervous as if I was playing.
The first result was on board 5. John Hawksworth, with White against John Quinn, commented: “I had a clear advantage soon after the opening, but was just too timid at critical moments. In particular, instead of 16. Rb1 [see diagram below] I should have played 16. Qxd6, not being scared of 16…b4 because I can play 17. e5 Ne8 18. Qxc5 bxc3 19. Nxc3 when I have three pawns for a piece and a dominant position (+2 according to the computer).”
As things turned out, the two Johns agreed a draw in a level position on move 25.
On board 3 Ash Stewart was facing the strong veteran Alan Perkins, who chose to counter Ash’s English Opening with the symmetrical system (1. c4 g6 2. Nc3 Bg7 3. g3 c5). Perfect symmetry it was not, however, as Black developed his king’s knight on h6 and then moved it to f5, while White made the early running on the queen’s side, pushing his pawn to b4. As often happens in the English, both players had to make a lot of difficult strategic decisions, backed up by tactical calculation. This position was reached after White’s 18th move:
Here Black played 18…Ne5, an error allowing 19. Nxe5 dxe5 20. Nxe6+! winning a pawn.
This meant that at roughly the halfway stage Kingston were doing well in one game, but the situation on the other boards was much less clear. On the top board Rick McMichael had avoided Peter Large’s preparation by cunningly playing a line of the Philidor Defence (1.e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 e5 4. dxe5 dxe5 5. Qxd8+ Kxd8 6. Bc4 Be6 7. Bxe6 fxe6) instead of his usual French. McMichael’s doubled isolated e-pawns might not have been aesthetically pleasing, but his position was very hard to attack. On board 2 David Maycock did not seem to have much play against Andrew Harley’s Ruy Lopez, and on board 6 Will Taylor was negotiating a complicated middlegame position arising from his opponent’s Bird’s Opening.
Peter Lalić’s games can usually be relied on for originality, and this one did not disappoint. Afterwards, I was surprised to see that when I put the score into chess.com it labelled the opening “Ruy Lopez, Old Steinitz Defence”. It’s true that after four moves Peter, with Black, and his opponent Martin Smith (both pictured above, with Martin facing the camera) had reached the position below, but by a very unconventional route, as if using an idiosyncratic satnav.
The second game to be completed put Kingston a point ahead, as Ash Stewart defeated Alan Perkins in a beautifully played game, which is featured with Ash’s notes in the Games section of the website. Following on from the position given above, Perkins sacrificed his knight on h4 to try to get a perpetual check, but the Kingston player parried this attempt efficiently and Black resigned a bishop down with his own king exposed.
Ealing, however, hit back soon after when Will Taylor, playing Black against Jonathan White, had to resign. He had fought for compensation after losing a pawn, but to no avail. So the score was 1.5-1.5, with three close games still to conclude.
Andrew Harley had succeeded in denying David Maycock any opportunities to unleash his tactical genius until the following position was reached:
Kingston were now one up, with two games to finish. The Large v McMichael game reached this position after move 17:
This made the score 3-2 to Kingston. We couldn’t lose the match, but could we win? In the last game to finish Peter Lalić had gambited his e-pawn, but after an exchange of queens on d1 White was unable to castle, and when Peter won the minor exchange his bishops and rooks pressured White’s position (see diagram below).
Thus a tight match ended on a dramatic note, and Kingston had won 4-2. A significant victory against one of our main rivals.
David Rowson, Kingston A captain in the Thames Valley League
Kingston A v Richmond A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 9 December 2024
All good things come to those who wait, perhaps. At least, Kingston A’s long-anticipated first Thames Valley League match of the season proved worth the wait when we defeated a slightly understrength Richmond team 5.5-0.5. Richmond were missing Mike Healey and were significantly outrated on every board except the top one, but, as everyone knows, such matches don’t always follow form so clearly.
The first result was a deceptively smooth win by David Maycock (pictured) on board 2. Deceptively smooth like a Capablanca win, in the words of IM Peter Large. David commented that his opponent, Maxim Dunn, slightly confused the theory, playing 12…Bb7 instead of Rb7 in this position:
Kingston won their second game on board 4 when Luca Buanne defeated Bertie Barlow. From a Scandinavian Defence, the players reached this position, in which an exchange sacrifice on f6 is more than promising.
My own game interrupted Kingston’s triumphal progress by finishing in an early draw. The game transposed from a Bishop’s Opening to a King’s Gambit Declined. Alastair Armstrong surprised me by playing an early Na4 in this position, securing the two bishops but losing tempi.
In this connection, I should mention that in our last match against Richmond, back in May, I sat at the board brooding on how I had allowed a winning position against Alastair to become a dead-drawn endgame, until he suddenly pointed out that my time had run out, and I’d managed to turn a draw into a loss. On Monday I decided it was better not to tempt fate.
On board 6, from an English Opening, Peter Andrews was two pawns down against Richmond captain Maks Gajowniczek (one an accident, he admitted, the other a genuine sacrifice) but with a great deal of positional compensation, as can be seen in the diagram. Black is unable to defend the d6 pawn.
A lead of 3.5-0.5 soon became 4.5-0.5 as Peter Lalić won the exchange by a clever tactic and then simplified into a winning ending against John Burke. This was the key position:
Fittingly, the last game to finish – with most of the rest of the players looking on – was the heavyweight one on board 1 between international masters Gavin Wall and Peter Large.
IMs Gavin Wall (facing camera) and Peter Large engage in an endgame battle as their team-mates watch on
Playing the French Defence, Peter gave up a pawn for positional compensation. Peter analyses a fascinating game in detail below, though, because of mutual time trouble, the final moves were not recorded.
Playing on little more than the increment, Peter showed toughness to refuse a draw and press home his advantage to eventually force his opponent’s resignation and make the final score in the match an emphatic 5.5-0.5. Kingston thus got off to a delayed but very satisfying start in the quest to retain our Thames Valley division 1 title. After the long wait, the matches will now come thick and fast, so we will need to keep up the momentum.
David Rowson, Kingston A captain in the Thames Valley League
Kingston A v Richmond A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston, on 20 May 2024
Sometimes a cliché just happens to fit the facts, so let’s say that Kingston’s 2023-24 Thames Valley League division 1 experience was a season of two halves. Up to the end of January, we had played seven matches, winning three, drawing three and losing one (to Ealing). Not too bad, but not title-winning form. In contrast, during the same period, our main rivals Hammersmith had won six and only drawn one match (against us). The title looked to be theirs. But the following weeks saw Kingston achieve consistently good results, winning three and drawing one, while Hammersmith seemed to lose their focus, losing three of their final five matches, including one at home to us.
The consequence of this was that on Monday 20 May we faced Richmond A at the Willoughby with the same number of match points (eight) as Hammersmith, but with this match in hand. If we won or drew we would be champions for the second year running.
The strength of our team is shown by the fact that Peter Lalić was on board 4. I reckon that few opponents would now mistake his opening 1. d3 d4 2. e5 as evidence of modest ambitions, as he has shown himself to be a master at patiently wringing victories from these innocent-looking moves. It happened again against Bertie Barlow. In the position below Peter was a pawn up, but if Bertie had contested the d-file with 37…Rd7 it would have been hard for Peter to make progress, as an exchange of rooks leaves a drawn king and pawn ending.
However, after 37…Rg7 38. Rd3, Peter first activated his rook and then pursued the winning plan of advancing his a-pawn to a6. His opponent allowed him to win the pawn on a7 in a desperate search for counterplay, but the white a-pawn was then unstoppable.
Kingston 1 Richmond 0, and David Maycock soon made it 2-0 with a win on board one, in a very different type of game. Gavin Wall opened with the Trompowsky Attack (1.d4 Nf6 2. Bg5), and after five moves this position was reached:
White took the offered e-pawn – 6. Nxe5 – and David then played the spectacular Ng4. Now 7. Bxd8 would not be sensible in view of 7…Bxf2 mate. Gavin defended with 7. Nd3, though David thought “7. Nxg4 was the way to go, to which Black would have played 7…Qxg5 8. h3 and Nc6 with compensation.” The game actually continued 7…Qxg5 8. Nxc5, giving this position:
Now David was able to spoil White’s kingside pawn structure with a temporary knight sacrifice. 8…Nxf2 9. Kxf2 Qh4+ 10. g3 Qd4+ winning back the knight. The position is still roughly level, but later Black’s rooks infiltrated White’s second rank to give the following position:
Here 25. Rf4 is best, though White’s situation would still be difficult. Instead, Gavin played 25. Rxf7 and lost queen for rook after 25…Rdg2+ 26. Kf1 Rf2+ 27. Rxf2 Rxf2+ 28. Kxf2 Qxg7. He resigned one move later. Another very impressive win for David against an IM.
On board 2 Vladimir Li and Michael Healey were having a technical battle in a line of the Catalan Opening. Mike gave up a pawn to activate his queen’s bishop, but was eventually left with a weak pawn on a6 and resigned when this was about to fall, at which point he had already lost two other pawns in a rook ending.
In our final two matches we have been very fortunate to have 10-year-old Supratit Banerjee (pictured) playing for us. His mature, patient play as Black against Maks Gajowniczek was remarkable for someone of his age. His analysis of the following position is instructive.
Supratit explained: “17…a5 is not the best here because after 18. a3 bxc5 19. bxc5 my queen cannot come to a5. If 17…a5 18. a3 axb4 then the white rook is occupying the a-file.” So Supratit played 17…bxc5 instead, and after 18. bxc5 Qa5 19. Rfb1 Ba6 he commented: “The white light-squared bishop defends key squares such as c4 and e4, so if I trade it then the black knight will become better than the white knight because the white knight has no good squares.” The game continued 20. Bf3, allowing Bc4, and Black has achieved an advantage on the queenside. White’s exchange of rooks on b8 added to this advantage, though presumably White was hoping to get counterplay with e4.
A few moves later this was the position, with White to play:
Supratit commented: “White has to play 26. Qc1. That would still be a slight advantage to Black, but White can hold if he plays perfectly.” Instead Maks took the bishop – 26. Qxc4 – and after 26…Qxf3 Black had a winning advantage due to the active position of his pieces and White’s kingside weakness. Supratit won on move 41.
Thus the four top-rated members of the team had already given us the wins needed for victory in the match and for the retention of the Thames Valley League title.
Among all these successes my own game hardly bears mention, but it did have some interesting points – one of them painful for me. In this position I saw an opportunity to win the exchange:
There followed 25. c4 Nc7 26. Bxc6 Qxc6 27. Qxb3 exd4 28. Bf4 Nc5. Here I moved too quickly and miscalculated, playing 29. Nxd4 when Qd1 would have kept more advantage. This was the position:
Black played 29…Nxb3 30. Nxc6 Nxa1 30. Rxe8 Nxe8 31. Nxd8. Seven successive captures have left me just a pawn up. I actually hoped to win this position, but my opponent played it better than me, and I ended up with bishop and two pawns against his knight and one pawn, but with me unable to make any progress. Disappointed, I sat looking at the position and completely forgot about my ticking clock. Suddenly my opponent broke into my reverie to point out that I had lost on time. It was a shocking and stupid finish to the game for me. Fortunately, these negative feelings were overlaid with delight that we had already won the league.
The final game to finish, like mine, made no difference to the overall result. John Foley had graciously stepped in as a substitute on board 3 when it turned out that Silverio Abasolo had got the wrong date for the match. Behind on the clock from the start, John had put up a good fight, but ultimately lost a rook ending to John Burke.
It is no exaggeration to say that in 2022-23 we had swept all before us; as a result, we felt that in the first matches of this season other clubs made a point of trying to get out their strongest players against Kingston. We sometimes struggled early on, but came through in the end. It has to be admitted that we were reliant on Hammersmith slipping up to give us any chance of winning the league, but then we had to show our mettle by taking that chance – and we did.
Many thanks to all the players who made this achievement possible, and to Peter Andrews and John Foley for captaining when I was unavailable, to Stephen Moss for his assistance with team selection, and to Greg Heath for his hard work getting everything ready for home matches. Next season … but no, let’s not even think about next season yet.
David Rowson, Kingston captain in Thames Valley League division 1
The first of an occasional series in which Kingston members and friends of the club choose the player who has most inspired them. Illustration by Theo Esposito Bennett
One of the first chess books I ever owned was not really a book at all, but a very slim booklet, produced by the Soviet press, with minimal production values, which somehow found itself in a bookshop in London in 1969. It contained the games of the recently concluded world championship match. The contenders were the ninth champion, Tigran Petrosian, and his successor, Boris Spassky.
I understood few of the moves, but that added to the mysterious fascination of the event. If the play of these two masters had been at all comprehensible to me it would have meant that there was nothing exalted about it. Likewise, I felt somehow – or rather read somewhere – that Petrosian was himself a player of special mystery. The American chess writer Irving Chernev, in another of my early chess books (The Most Instructive Games of Chess ever Played), had encouraged this belief by his comment on the game Petrosian-Korchnoi, 1946: “Petrosian must have the spark of genius! How else could he, with a few mysterious moves, cause the quick collapse of so eminent a player as Korchnoi?” I wasn’t aware at the time that in 1946 Korchnoi was only 15 years old.
In 1946 Petrosian himself was only 16 or 17. His already exceptional talent had its roots in a very tough childhood, as described by the man himself in an interview in Life magazine in April 1969. According to this, his Armenian parents were illiterate and he was orphaned at a young age. Growing up in wartime Tbilisi, Georgia, he had to work as a road-sweeper to earn some roubles, or perhaps kopeks, to survive. This was clearly a formative experience.
“I started sweeping streets in the middle of winter,” Petrosian recalled, “and it was horrible. Of course, there were no machines then, and everything had to be done by hand. Some of the older men helped me out. I was a weak boy. And I was ashamed of being a street sweeper – that’s natural, I suppose. It wasn’t too bad in the early morning when the streets were empty, but when it got light and the crowds came out I really hated it.”
Petrosian was one of the golden generation of Soviet players who peaked in the 1960s. This also included Viktor Korchnoi, Mikhail Tal, Spassky and Efim Geller. All of them grew up in hard times: the second world war and the final years of Stalinism. To those of us who followed the chess of that era, each player seemed to have a distinct personality and style, but Petrosian’s style was probably the most singular.
One might speculate as to whether the experiences of his early years had an influence on this. With the kopeks saved from his road-sweeping he had bought Nimzowitsch’s My System, and he often afterwards stated how significant that positional chess manual had been for him. In his games there is usually an emphasis on the permanent features of the position – pawn structures, strong and weak squares, the long-term relative values of the pieces and so on. Curiously, like Mikhail Tal, Petrosian was known for his sacrifices, but, unlike Tal, Petrosian’s were often defensive, the most famous being his exchange sacrifices. Again, in contrast to Tal, Petrosian sacrificed material not to gain time but for long-term positional reasons.
As an example, here is the position after White’s 25th move in the game Reshevsky-Petrosian from the 1953 Candidates’ Tournament, Zurich:
However, with Petrosian it can sometimes be difficult to say whether a sacrifice like this is defensive or offensive. His game against Czech (and later German) grandmaster Vlastimil Hort from the 1970 European Team Championships is an example. Petrosian is Black and plays the Winawer Variation of the French Defence.
One reason Petrosian’s style attracted me was that commentors often referred to his deep understanding of the mysteries of positional chess. Of course, as a novice player, I was far from understanding even some basic aspects of the game, let alone its deep mysteries, but I was hopeful that studying Petrosian’s games might initiate me into some of these.
One aspect of his play which I could hope to find myself copying at my own undistinguished level was his pragmatism, in particular his readiness to make the moves required by the position even if they looked ugly or humbling. Petrosian seemed to be saying that it was OK to retreat a piece or to repeat a move if necessary. The following position in the fourth game of the world championship match against Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963 is an example of this.
In retrospect, I think another reason why I was drawn to Petrosian’s style of play was my misconception that if you were a master of strategy you didn’t need to worry so much about tactical details – and I was weak at tactics. In fact, as many commentators have noted, Petrosian was actually a superb tactician. You can’t base your game on strategy if the tactics are wrong. In addition, it’s been pointed out that Petrosian’s image as a purely defensive player is false. He could also play attacking combinations and, according to Spassky, “It is to Petrosian’s advantage that his opponents never know when he is suddenly going to play like Mikhail Tal.”
The 10th game from Spassky’s world championship match with Petrosian in 1966 must have been the kind of thing he had in mind. Petrosian has White against Spassky’s King’s Indian Defence.
Interestingly, Petrosian had perpetrated a very similar combination 10 years before on Vladimir Simagin (Petrosian-Simagin, Moscow Championship play-off 1956):
For more than a decade Petrosian fought his way through zonals, interzonals and candidates tournaments against his peers, until he finally qualified to play Botvinnik for the world title in 1963. He won this match convincingly 12.5-9.5. It might be said that he was fortunate that Botvinnik’s right to a return match had been abolished by Fide, but Petrosian proved he was a worthy champion by defending his title against Boris Spassky in 1966 with a score of 12.5-11.5. He lost to Spassky in 1969, but he remained one of the top players in the world until his death in 1984 at the early age of 55. He won the Soviet Chess Championship four times; the only players to record more wins were Botvinnik and Tal with six titles.
The ways in which Petrosian is sometimes described make it seem as if he inhabited a chess world of his own. This could be seen as implying either his limitations (he is often regarded as too cautious, with a very high percentage of draws) or as a sign of his unique understanding of the game. I have to accept that he did draw many games, but he also lost very few (his record playing for the Soviet Union in 10 Olympiads was +78, = 50, -1).
To conclude, in my view, playing through his best games can enrich any player’s understanding of chess’s infinite possibilities. This was brought home to me again recently when Kingston’s head of training, FM Julian Way, led an online discussion of the fifth game of the match with Botvinnik. It was a great choice; there is so much to learn from it.
Hammersmith A v Kingston A, Thames Valley division 1 match played at the London MindSports Centre, London W6 on 14 March 2024
Fate, or the Thames Valley fixtures secretaries, decreed that in the week beginning 11 March our first team played season-defining matches against its two main rivals: Epsom in the Surrey League and Hammersmith in the Thames Valley League. We had recorded a famous victory against Epsom on the Monday; could we do the same at Hammersmith on the Thursday? They were also playing their second match in a week, but had only drawn at Richmond, so maybe we would go into the clash with more confidence.
On arrival at the impressive London MindSports Centre we discovered that the Hammersmith team was missing some of its strongest players, a few of whom were playing in the Reykjavik Open. They were still able to field a challenging team, however. Their top board, Thomas Bonn, had won seven and drawn just one of his eight TVL games before this match.
The game on board 3 was the first to finish. Peter Lalić opened with the Mieses Opening (1. d3) against Hammersmith captain Bajrush Kelmendi’s customary double fianchetto. Peter soon took control of the c-file and Bajrush’s pieces were an unhappy picture by move 27:
None of them can defend g6. There was a very conclusive denouement, starting from this position:
The evolution of the opening on board 6 was instructive. John Foley’s opponent, Greg Billenness, clearly wanted an attacking game, as he choose the Blackmar Gambit: 1.d4 d5 2. e4. However, John foiled this by playing 2…c6 to transpose to his familiar Caro-Kann Defence. White was still determined to have a tactical game and chose the double-edged Fantasy Variation (3. f3). John was ready for this, and played what he described as “the sharpest line of the sharpest line”, giving this position (not for the faint-hearted) after move 4.
Sitting next to John, I spent almost as much time looking at his game as my own, since it seemed much more interesting. After 5. dxe5 Bc5 6. Na4 Qa5+ 7. c3 Bxg1 8.Rxg1 John could have played 8…dxe4, winning back the pawn, but instead chose to make it a gambit with Nd7. John built up pressure in the centre and as a result Greg first gave up a pawn and then the exchange. John had to be careful, as White’s queen and knight threatened to combine against Black’s king, but in the end the Hammersmith player’s time pressure told and he blundered the knight. 2-0 to Kingston.
David Maycock is never afraid to sacrifice the exchange for an attack, and in this game, a Sicilian Defence, he did it twice. First, in the position below.
David decided to use his mobile pawn majority by playing 20. c5. Black took the rook – 20…Nxc1 21. Rxc1 – but erred by playing 21…dxc5 (Rd8 was better), which was answered by 22. d6! Three moves later this position arose, with White to play.
My own game featured a reversal of fortunes. Reaching this position from a Giuoco Piano, I felt I was on top and just needed to work out how to pursue a kingside attack:
As we were well ahead in the match I offered a draw here. It’s actually still quite a tricky position for both sides. A queen exchange is likely to favour Black, whose rook and king will be better placed, but my opponent was probably worried about his time, so he accepted the offer.
On board 4 Will Taylor was facing Christof Brixel, who must be underrated – he’s actually won all his TVL games this season. In a difficult position arising from an English Opening, Will lost the exchange and had to resign soon after.
The final game finished in unusual circumstances. Silverio Abasolo, who had loyally come all the way from Kent to play, needed to finish in time to catch the train back. In a close ending he blitzed out his moves and eventually the players agreed a draw, unfortunately too late for Silverio to get the train he wanted. We were very grateful for his participation, as apart from giving the team an extra half-point it also meant that his team-mates below him played a board lower than they otherwise would have.
This completed a perfect week for Kingston’s first team, with wins against our main rivals in the two leagues, leaving us with an outside chance of the title in both. This victory put us level with Hammersmith on match points, but they had three game points more, so as well as winning our final two matches we would need to win well and hope our rivals slipped up.
David Rowson, Kingston A captain in the Thames Valley League
IM Michael Basman, who died on 26 October at the age of 76, was an innovator who passed on his love and deep knowledge of the game to countless players in Surrey and beyond
David Rowson
At the start of his chess career, Michael Basman might have been seen as part of the 1960s wave of young English players which also included Ray Keene and Bill Hartston, foreshadowing the English chess explosion of the 1970s. But Basman was never just part of a movement: he was much too individual and original for that. He was a great innovator at the board, a pioneer of neglected opening systems, but perhaps most importantly he developed new ideas about the teaching and popularisation of chess.
As long-time Kingston Chess Club member Julian Way remembers, Basman was always sceptical about established principles and didn’t like second-hand received knowledge. Julian studied with Basman as a junior, and then much later he had some mentoring from him, which assisted Julian in his approach to teaching chess himself. “Mike was a very original teacher,” he says. “He approached the game like a beginner, not an expert, in the sense of having a humble, open mind. He was unafraid to question everything. He liked to read the books of the early masters, going back as far as Ruy Lopez, as he felt they had an uncontaminated approach. He was a great teacher because he valued the progress of beginners as much as stronger players.”
MIchael Basman demonstrating the games of Henry Bird at a talk he gave at Kingston in February 2022 Photograph: John Foley
Basman told Julian that he felt his life’s mission was to popularise chess. “He had the idea of putting lessons on audio tape, instead of into books, realising that listening could be a valid alternative learning methodology to reading.” He launched the UK Chess Challenge in 1996, which encouraged huge numbers of schoolchildren to participate in the game – around 50,000 annually and more than a million since its inception. Basman was very interested in how a good cadre of teachers could be produced. Julian explains, “His vision of chess teaching was to take people who knew little or nothing about chess and train them.” He was above all concerned to find people who had some teaching skills, or at least good communication skills, and direct them towards teaching chess.
Basman’s father was originally from Armenia; Basman himself studied for a time in the Armenian capital, Erevan, and won the city’s championship whilst there. However, he was a Surrey local, attending Surbiton County Grammar School and playing for several clubs in the area, starting with Surbiton as a junior and making a significant contribution to local chess right to the end of his life. He had many career highlights, including draws with two ex-world champions, Mikhail Botvinnik (Hastings 1966-67) and Mikhail Tal (Hastings 1973-74). In 1967 he led the English team at the World Students’ Championships, at which they finished third and scored a surprise 3-1 win against the Soviet Union. Basman won the top-board game against Vladimir Savon. His best result in the British Championships was first equal with Hartston in 1973, though he lost the tie-break. He became an international master in 1980.
The following is a game which Mike played against another uniquely creative player, Albin Planinc. Black’s opening is provocative in the extreme; some would say foolhardy, others brave, but it works out surprisingly well. In the 1974-75 edition of Hastings Mike only scored 5.5/15, but this included wins against Ulf Andersson, Pal Benko, Michael Stean and Jonathan Mestel, as well as Planinc. His fighting spirit is shown by the fact that he only drew one game out of the 15.
Kingston’s first-team captain has been spending the summer in Georgia. A foray to the centre of chess life there may not have been the ideal preparation for the start of the new season
David Rowson
TheTbilisi Chess Palace: The construction of a special building for chess shows its importance to the Soviet state
Unlike our cherished Willoughby Arms, the Tbilisi Chess Palace was purpose-built in the 1970s for the practice and promotion of the game. Its full name is, however, the Tbilisi Chess Palace and Alpine Club, so it yokes together two activities which are usually thought of as rather distinct from one other (the Willoughby’s combination of chess and Irish music is perhaps less unlikely and certainly less strenuous).
The construction of a special building for chess and the implication that it is at least as significant an activity as mountain-climbing indicate its importance to the Soviet state and its people. There’s a comprehensive account of the Chess Palace’s significance and of the Soviet and Georgian chess background here.
When I first came to live and work in Tbilisi in 1988, I stumbled upon the palace and was lucky enough to find that an international tournament was taking place there, with the bonus that it featured Mikhail Tal, Oleg Romanishin and … Stuart Conquest. Stuart achieved the remarkable feat of beating both Tal and Romanishin (playing Black in both games), but, as a sign of the strength of East European chess at that time, the tournament winners were the little-known Bulgarian Valentin Lukov and the Georgian Elizbar Ubilava.
I didn’t realise it then, of course, but the privileged position of chess within the USSR would soon be under threat, as the Soviet state itself weakened and finally collapsed. Many top Georgian players, having lost their state subsidies, emigrated to other countries and/or tried other means of earning a living, such as starting businesses or playing poker. Yet the Chess Palace itself remains in place and, I assume, still plays a key role in the development of Georgian chess. Thirty-four years after I first encountered it, staying in Georgia this summer I decided to visit the palace again.
The Soviet empire that supported chess so generously may have gone, but Georgia’s Chess Palace lives on
Hovering in the empty reception area, I was greeted by a man who emerged from an office with “What do you want?” I told him I was English and interested in chess. I avoided unnecessary and complicated explanations about how I used to live in Tbilisi and had actually played in two minor tournaments here 34 years ago. He asked me to wait, and about 10 minutes later called me in to meet another man, in his seventies, who addressed me with some words of English, trying to understand what I was doing in the otherwise empty chess palace in the sweltering month of August, when all normal people had gone off to the Black Sea or to mountain resorts.
He produced a board and set, and without further talk we began what was in effect a five-minute game without a clock. Playing Black, I very quickly found myself in a tricky line of the Two Knights’ Defence, transposed from a Scotch Gambit. A few moves later I was faced with losing my queen, being checkmated or possibly both. I opted for resignation, mentally blaming my comparative inadequacy on my opponent’s no doubt rigorous training in the Soviet school of chess.
I asked him his name – “Roman”. Clearly not Roman Dzindzichashvili (actually “Jinjikhashvili” would be a shorter and more accurate transliteration, but would spoil the spectacle of all those consonants together) as he was thin and wiry, the opposite of the once famous Georgian grandmaster (and US champion). He eluded my question about his rating, and tactfully made no comment when I told him mine. I noted that he didn’t ask me if I was interested in playing for the local first team, or any other team, for that matter.
For our second game I sought the security of my beloved King’s Indian Attack. Attack it was, on both sides of the board, him on the kingside and me on the other. He sacrificed the exchange and the position was very double-edged, so I bailed out by giving back the exchange for perpetual check. I hoped he hadn’t decided to go easy on a clueless foreigner. I had the feeling that if I could play him every week I would become quite a decent player, but he’s probably too busy doing the organisational work for the next generation of Baadur Jobavas and Nona Gaprindashvilis.
The palace is dedicated to Georgia’s former women’s world champion Nona Gaprindashvili, the first female GM
