Wimbledon 1 v Kingston 1, Surrey League division 1 match played at St Winefride’s Church Hall, Wimbledon SW19 on 23 April 2026

Kingston had secured the Surrey League division 1 (Surrey Trophy) title the previous week by beating Guildford, and Wimbledon were already assured of relegation,  but although the Kingston team was somewhat depleted by a mixture of work commitments, medical factors and the clash with the World Seniors in Albania, there was no end-of-term feel to the fighting chess in this match.

We started 1 up when David Rowson’s board 6 opponent failed to appear. Then on board 3 John Hawksworth, with Black, drew quickly with Neil Cannon after some missed opportunities arising out of the Smith-Morra Gambit.  

Martyn Jones has played some powerful chess recently, and his board 7 game with Black against Stephen Carpenter was another example.

Ash Stewart’s appearances this season have been limited by other commitments, but we were very grateful to have him for a match for which several of our strongest players were missing, and he showed his class on board 2 with White against Marcus Baker. His notes, on which those below are based, reveal his care to minimise opportunities for an opponent known to be a dangerous attacking player with several strong scalps over the past two seasons. After some opening nuances, White already had a decent edge when the tactics began.

Hereabouts two promising games went wrong. On board 8, Xavier Cowan built a strong attack with White on his first-team debut, but he was already almost on the increment by move 18, and somewhere in the scramble (which meant that the key part of the game is lost to history) things went downhill and he lost to Georgi Velikov.

My own defeat with Black on board 5 against the indefatigable Gordon Rennie was the result of too much confidence rather than too little time. I had won a critical game for the Bank of England in the City Chess Association League the previous evening, and when a pseudo-sacrifice could not be accepted and gave me an advantage in space and co-ordination, I lost my sense of danger with fatal results.

A 3.5-2.5 lead was not totally safe with board 1 looking level and board 4 a bit dicey. On board 1, Peter Lalić is of course confident in his ability to win queenless middle games with fewer tactical risks, but this time with Black against Dan Rosen he did not gain an advantage until all the pieces had gone. We joked (OK, not quite Michael McIntyre class) that next time he might try to exclude all danger by playing to win on a completely empty board.  Humour aside, there were some instructive points both in the pawn endgame and the subsequent queen endgame.

On board 4, Jasper Tambini was mindful that a win might be needed, and, with White against Sean Ingle’s redoubtable French Defence, was eventually rewarded for a gutsy choice to decline a draw when objectively worse, although ahead on the clock.

So the match finished 5.5-2.5, a reasonable outcome for both teams given that Kingston were missing some big hitters and Wimbledon were up against it in rating terms. Overall that meant Kingston repeated their achievement of 2024/25 by winning division 1 of the Surrey League with seven match points out of eight, although we won half a game point less this time round.

Fourteen different players represented Kingston 1 this season, a smaller number than played for Kingston 2 despite first-team matches involving an extra board, and strong availability at the head of the team was the primary reason for its overall success. David Maycock scored 6.5/7, a remarkable effort given the strength of the opposition – the only half-point he dropped was to the prodigious Supratit Banerjee, whom he beat in the return. Peters Lalić and Large scored 6.5/8 and 5/6 respectively. Those performances on the top three boards meant that scores either side of 50% by other regulars were sufficient to see us home. A special mention goes to Jasper Tambini, after Peter Lalić the only other ever-present.

Peter Andrews is Kingston 1 captain in Surrey League division 1

Final table

Kingston A v Ealing A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 20 April 2026

The visit of Ealing was significant for both Kingston A, looking to maintain their lead in Thames Valley League Division 1, and Kingston B, for whom Ealing are relegation rivals. It was therefore not ideal that the match coincided with the World Senior Team Championship in Albania, so Kingston were without their usual captain, IM Peter Large, although we welcomed John Foley back from a recent medical absence. Notwithstanding our rating advantage, it was a very well-contested match, with all six games going the distance in terms of time, moves or both, and for much of the evening the outcome was in doubt. The consensus at the end was that the score flattered Kingston on the run of play.

John Foley’s game on board 6 was the first to come to the boil. His play was full of energy, a brilliancy in the offing, and then went wrong, requiring a courageous rescue.

The game I was most confident of from an early stage was John Hawksworth’s on board 3. He has kindly provided notes on the whole game on which the following draw heavily.

Julian Way’s game on board 4 also only seemed likely to have one of two results, although it was some time before he had more than the edge White starts with.

When the teamsheets were exchanged, the smart money was on board 5 to produce an entertaining clash, since both Xavier Cowan, in the Surrey League a Kingston player but in the TVL representing his original club, and our own Jasper Tambini enjoy a battle. FM Vladimir Li kindly provided some expert evaluations in real time on most of the games for the benefit of those following on WhatsApp, but admitted he would have needed an engine for this one. Even more mind-blowing, neither player realised when White resigned that the final position was a draw – that only emerged when the engines dissected the drama several hours later.

And so, as in so many Kingston matches, the last two games in progress were those of David Maycock and Peter Lalić, although this time we had already scored enough to win the match. That was just as well, for neither were having things all their own way. On board 1, FM Andrew Harley had played very well against David. David has a great talent for continually creating activity and hence pressure, the more so as time runs short, but on this occasion he was definitely running a risk.

On board 2, Peter Lalić had defied stereotype by starting with 1. e4, but found himself on unfamiliar ground in the Petrov. He gained an advantage which gradually slipped away, and found himself in the unusual position of having to defend a difficult ending – more characteristically with very little time on the clock.

So there it was, a 5-1 win which could easily have been 3-3, and six games which all had some meat in, hence the length of this report. The A team now have a four-point lead over Hammersmith with only six more on the table, so confidence is justified, but, as these games showed, concentration and tenacity are still required. 

Peter Andrews was acting captain of Kingston A in this match

Kingston 1 v Guildford 1, Surrey League division 1 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 13 April 2026

Kingston v Guildford is a very friendly but very keen rivalry, and this clash had plenty riding on it. If either team won the match, they would win the division 1 title. A 4-4 draw would favour Kingston without being decisive – it would mean that a 4-4 draw or better against Wimbledon when we travel there on 23 April would suffice for the title.

Two strong teams lined up, with Kingston having the rating advantage on the top two boards while the lower boards looked well matched. We had the further advantage of a non-playing captain to ease the nerves when our board 1 was slightly late. Clive Frostick won the toss for Guildford, worthwhile given the colour preferences of our top two, without being of the same materiality as in division 2 where the matches are of an odd number of boards.

The early returns maintained the suspense. On board 7, Julian Way took a quick draw – he was outrated and had Black, while Clive Frostick was fatigued after taking part in the Guildford Congress over the weekend. Board 4, John Hawksworth v Matthew Dishman, was almost as short – John was suffering from an energy-sapping foot injury. Board 6, Peter Hasson v Timothy Foster, took longer but had the same result – in an accurately played game by both sides, Peter maintained roughly his initial edge as White, but never more. The a-file opened early, creating an avenue for the major pieces to exchange themselves off, and there was no obvious lever for either side to make something of the minor-piece ending.

On board 5, Zain Patel, with Black facing Adrian Wallace, had seemed to me to be in some early danger, with the “Greek Gift” (for new readers, a situation in which say White is able to sacrifice Bxh7+ and after Kxh7 to play Ng5+ and Qh5, mating on h7) in the air because of the shortage of black minor pieces defending the king. However, a subsequent tour of the hall showed that he had stabilised the situation, and I mentally chalked up another valuable half-point.

Relaxing over a coffee in the foyer, I was soon alarmed to see Zain emerge from the playing area with a wry look suggesting that he had done some schoolboy mischief and was hoping to escape unnoticed. I rushed over to relieve him of his scoresheet for this report, ready to offer some consoling words, and was amazed to see the glorious digits 0-1 at the bottom. With his usual endearing modesty, he explained that his win had resulted from a simple blunder. In such a close and critical match, most of us would have enjoyed the win whatever its artistic shortcomings, but he had indeed dodged a bullet in the middle game as well as being the recipient of a gift at the end as we see below.

With that hurdle overcome, I was confident of the match result, with all the remaining boards looking at least safe. On board 8 Jasper Tambini, facing the rising junior Alistair Jennis, had played the sort of gambit he enjoys against solid black systems like the French and Caro-Kann. Initially the compensation looked modest, but he was clearly the more comfortable in the kind of game which had resulted.

On board 3, Peter Large, playing an old adversary and team-mate in Nigel Povah, had a long and tense struggle, but as on boards 4, 6 and 7 there were no big swings in the advantage, though there was an interesting phase in the queenless middle game in which Peter correctly refused an offered pawn.

So we had a 4-2 lead with the top two boards outstanding. And outstanding is the best description of the scores racked up by Messrs Lalić and Maycock this season in their contrasting styles. Peter Lalić played one of his idiosyncratic openings with White against FM Jon Ady to reach the kind of queenless middle game in which he is far more experienced than even strong and titled opponents, and then came up with an interesting idea.

Peter may have been a little disappointed only to draw a game in which he had been well on top for several hours. But it was the half-point that got us over the line in the match and for the title, and so warmly appreciated by his team-mates and other club members gathered round the board.

David Maycock produced a classy effort with Black to grind down the formidable Gwilym Price on board 1. A characteristically principled opening gave him an advantage in activity which, although small, is the kind of edge which can be turned into a win at this level. The conversion process was more Lalićian, with long periods in which White was left to chafe against his fetters, than Maycockian, with fireworks, but none the less instructive for that, so with David’s kind agreement the whole game is given here.

Peter Andrews is Kingston 1 captain in the Surrey League

Ashtead 1 v Kingston 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at the Peace Memorial Hall, Ashtead on 7 April 2026

The Surrey League Division 2 (Beaumont Cup) table showed in advance of this match that if Kingston 2 were defeated, Guildford 2, with two outstanding matches, could still catch us on match points. We had 12.5 more game points, so a defeat by no worse than 2-5 would ensure that even two 7-0 wins for Guildford would be insufficient to overhaul us.

I was confident that was within our scope, but with several regulars away for holiday or work reasons, David Rowson falling ill the day before the match, and Ashtead having several strong players who occasionally turn out for them, it was by no means a done deal. Those concerns were reinforced before the start. The familiar figure of Peter Lalić was hovering in the background, and he certainly wasn’t eligible to play for us. And of course, this being Division 2, I lost the toss, giving us four Blacks out of seven.

Quick draws for Jasper Tambini on board 2 against Phil Brooks and John Foley on board 3 against Dan Rosen, in both cases outrated by over 100 points, soon settled the nerves. Tom Mayers on board 6 took only slightly longer to draw with Bertie Barlow. Tom had had an edge from the opening, but the position soon became blocked and roughly equal, and he wisely took no risks.

My game with Peter Lalić was also fairly short but rather more exciting, in a bad way. In a similar line to our clash in the Thames Valley match between Kingston A and B early in the season, Peter had thrown his kingside pawns up the board, sacrificing one of them. The sacrifice was not strictly sound, but tempted me to try to hold the material rather than get castled, and in a difficult but in principle equal position I missed a game-ending shot.

At about the same time, Alan Scrimgour won on board 4 against Ian McLeod. This was one of those rare games where one player is able to build a winning advantage by positional means without an obvious major error on the other side.

Stephen Moss, who had kindly stepped up to play board 7 when David Rowson fell ill, had a much longer and more dramatic game with Adrian Waldock. An aggressive line against the English had given him a space advantage. White had countered on the kingside which had opened up, potentially embarrassing both kings, but by the time we join the action (and this was about the time spectators were moving over from the other games) it was clear that it was White’s king which was in trouble.

That left us 3.5-2.5 ahead, and, with at least one match point in the bag, fine calculations around game points became academic. As it turned out, Martyn Jones on board 5 was able to seal the win in an entertaining though unrecorded finish against Tom Barton.

Martyn, playing Black, had won a pawn and also had the better bishop by the early stages of the endgame, and seemed at one point to have a winning chance in hand-to-hand fighting between the central pawns. But the position became blocked, and White penetrated with a rook. Towards the end there seemed to be a risk that Martyn’s king would get mated mid-board, hemmed in by pawns.  With both players down to a minute or less, Martyn played Be8, defending all the threats but leaving the bishop en prise to a rook on e6. As he did so, he offered a draw. His opponent was equally unaware that he had just been presented with a game that he had been fighting to save for most of the evening, and accepted the draw, giving us a 4-3 win.

So we won the match and with it the Surrey League division 2 championship, only four seasons after Kingston 1 had won the same division. Whereas that was a logical stepping stone en route to contesting the summit of Surrey chess, this has been much more of a surprise (until this season we have regarded staying in the division as our objective) and therefore arguably a greater achievement by the players involved.

We were outrated in five of our 10 matches, according to the one-month-lagged ratings used by Surrey, and we lost the toss in eight of those 10 matches – significant when that means 4 Blacks and 3 Whites. In all the close finishes, of which there were many (two drawn matches, a 4-3 win, three 4.5-2.5 wins), someone seemed to pull out a result when it was needed.

Eighteen different people played during the season. Of the regulars, Alan Scrimgour (6/8) and David Rowson (5/7) had the best results. But the strength of this team was in depth, with for example Homayoon Froogh (4.5/5) and Martyn Jones (3.5/5) scoring heavily on the lower boards, increasing their ratings and moving up the order as the season went on, and Stephen Moss scoring 3 out of 4 in addition to his tireless driving.

Over the next few weeks I intend to consult the player pool as to whether we wish to have a crack at division 1 or whether, if we have the choice, we might be able to remain in what is already a highly challenging division. But for the moment Kingston 2 should enjoy their unexpected success in winning one of the few trophies which eluded the club in 2024-25.  

Peter Andrews is Kingston 2 captain in Surrey League division 2

Kingston 2 v Wimbledon 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 23 March 2026

As in the away fixture a few weeks earlier, Kingston 2 had a big rating advantage against a Wimbledon 2 team depleted by nominations calls by their first team. So despite losing the toss we were confident of the win which would seal the Surrey League division 2 title barring a remarkable finish by Guildford 2. But expectation brings its own pressure.

Jasper Tambini had the first point on the board in half an hour when Wimbledon’s board 3 failed to appear. Tom Mayers, with White on board 6, followed with a nice finish against Malcolm Lowry.

Either side of Tom, Homayoon Froogh on board 5 and Thivan Gunawardana on board 7 showcased the Caro-Kann defence. Homayoon’s opponent, John Deacon, threw his kingside pawns up the board, gaining space but leaving his king with nowhere to go, and once the queens came off Homayoon was able to exploit the weakness of White’s pawns. Thivan’s game (below) was different – he was the one who gained the space advantage against Omar Selim, and he then won material when White tried to break out.

Martyn Jones, who has won a lot of games lately, added a mysterious one to the list with White against Stephen Carpenter on board 4. When the players stopped recording because they both had fewer than five minutes on the clock, they had reached a position which they both thought was about level – Martyn had just declined a draw. But Stockfish thinks White is losing here – evaluation worse than minus 2 – presumably based of White’s broken pawns, although with the black king so open White must have practical chances.

Martyn has not been able to reconstruct the rest of the game in detail, but he was able to play rook to d4 and b4 check, driving the black king to c8. Black then chased white kingside pawns and allowed the queen on c3 to h8, mating in two. In an open position and a time scramble, errors can easily overturn pre-existing advantages.

No such luck for David Rowson, who ran into tough resistance from Sam Hall on board 2. This was a slow burner for the first 20 moves or so, and then the advantage swung both ways, as usual with time running short.

My own game with Black against Gordon Rennie on board 1 finished around the same time. Gordon has had to carry the management challenge posed by the loss of players and play higher-rated opponents in every match for Wimbledon, and he certainly makes a fight of it. This was the game with the most mutual jeopardy, judging by the spectators around the board towards the end (see photograph above) and the whisky I needed to sleep once I got home. Time trouble was of course a factor, but most of the critical phase of the game was recorded.

The result means that Kingston 2 cannot be overhauled on match points in division 2. Guildford 2 can catch us if we lose at Ashtead on 7 April and they win all their remaining matches, but to catch us on game points as well they would need something like three 6-1 wins, which in such a tight division is unlikely. We should not take the Ashtead match lightly – the day after our win against Wimbledon 2, they turned out a team with 2100+ rated Dan Rosen on board 4 – but it does look as though perhaps the most remarkable of our likely trophy successes this season is almost in the bag.

Peter Andrews is club chair and captain of Kingston 1 and Kingston 2 in the Surrey League

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

Wimbledon 2 v Kingston 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at St Winefride’s Church Hall, Wimbledon on 5 March 2026

Wimbledon 2 have been depleted by the requirement for several hitherto regular players to be nominated for their first team, which has been stricken by long-term illness and players moving on. So even though we were able to share some match opportunities around the second team squad, the teamsheets showed that we had a huge rating advantage. Winning the toss loaded the dice further in our favour.

For once I had the shortest game, freeing me to consume more coffee than was optimal for sleep on a chess night and allowing me to keep the wider club informed of later developments by WhatsApp. My opponent, playing White, went downhill in an unusual line, and resigned after just 15 moves in the horrid position shown below.

Next to finish was Jon Eckert on board 6, on home ground in the French Defence. White tied himself in knots trying to hold on to an extra pawn and Jon progressively undermined the fragile structure.

On board 5, Alex Chmelev also got an advantage early on and cashed in.

Homayoon Froogh’s game on board 4, where he had Black against Omar Selim, looked tight for longer. But as the board opened up, Homayoon’s two rooks and two bishops were much stronger than White’s two rooks and two knights, and he won large amounts of material with a combination of pins. At 4-0 we were over the line in the match within two hours of the start.

Board 1 was a tense battle between David Rowson and Gordon Rennie, a familiar opponent. David won a pawn, but in the rook and bishop v rook and knight ending both sides had a queenside passed pawn with some activity.  David sacrificed the exchange for Black’s passed pawn, leaving him with a bishop and two pawns for a rook. Objectively this was enough to win, but under some time pressure David did not quite trust his calculation and agreed a draw.

Board 7 looked like the game with the most mutual jeopardy, but Kingston newcomer Constantin Liesch, who had White against Nathan Hoong, seems to like it that way, and after a middle game in which both sides had chances he finished with a fine sacrificial attack.

Board 3 was, as had always seemed likely, last to finish. In a c3 Sicilian, Alan Scrimgour built up pressure against various weak points in the black position while pre-empting any possible counterplay, so it was difficult for Black to find sensible moves (and the machine has not much better advice in hindsight).

So the final score was 6.5-0.5. Not too surprising given the rating difference between the teams, but convincingly delivered.  With only two matches to go, one of them the return against a weakened Wimbledon 2, we are now odds on to win division 2, which would be a tremendous achievement only four years after the first team did so, and all the more so given that we have been outrated in several close matches.

It poses a dilemma – should we take promotion to division 1, which would be a very tough challenge, not least on the organisational front, with two eight-board teams in Surrey and possibly two six-board teams in Thames Valley division 1, or should we seek to decline it, or should the answer depend on whether the TVL B team stays in that first division? These issues lie ahead, but for now we can enjoy some hard-earned success, and look to drive it home in the last two matches.   

Peter Andrews is captain of Kingston 1 and Kingston 2 in the Surrey League

Kingston 2 v Guildford 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 9 February 2026

Kingston 2 had a somewhat reshaped team for this match. My main concern was that Guildford 2 would turn up with the strength of which they are capable and our new and newish players might then have a discouraging experience.

My worries were half mitigated before and at the start. Guildford’s captain Clive Frostick, himself a Kingston player in the 4NCL, was unable to make the journey. And although we would be heavily outgunned on the top 3 boards, the match-ups looked close on the other four, and given that our new players tend to be improvers, I thought they might sneak a few results. The toss didn’t help – we lost for the sixth time in 7 matches, which in seven- board matches counts for a bit.

On board 2, Alan Scrimgour made a quick draw with Guildford’s stand-in captain Adrian Wallace in a Spanish. The computer evaluation of the final position, a queenless middle game, was indeed level. There was plenty of material and play left for both sides, but Alan was happy to take a draw on one of the “uphill” boards, especially as the situation was starting to look encouraging elsewhere.

Jon Eckert drew first blood with White on board 6 against Alvin Petersen. The game hung on a mistake in the position below.

Next, with White on board 4, Martyn Jones (pictured above in a previous match) terminated Alistair Jennis’s threatening attack by spotting mate the other way.

Guildford hit back in a fluctuating and spectacular battle on board 3 between our Stephen Lovell, who had Black, and Tim Foster.

Around the same time, I succumbed with Black on board 1 to Matthew Dishman, in a game that showed the danger of allowing emotion to override calculation. Early over-optimism was succeeded by premature pessimism.

That meant scores were level with two games still in progress, in both of which the Kingston player was making his second-team debut. So they were both getting a full evening’s entertainment. Could they also get the points to get us over the line in the match?

Constantin Liesch, with Black on board 7 against Anthony Garrood, certainly had a memorable introduction to second-team chess, with a crowd around the board in the later stages of this exciting battle.

That left another second-team debutant, Alex Chmelev, needing to win with Black on board 5 against Guildford veteran Trevor Jones to save the match. Fortunately he had won a pawn around move 20, and by the time spectator attention turned to his board he had reached what looked to be a winning rook and pawn ending, with his king able to get in front of his passed pawn and to the queening square, the textbook condition to win.

It was a long slog – the game went some 80 moves – and there may have been a few detours off the textbook path, but all was well that ended well. So we added a matchpoint to our tally and deprived Guildford of one. Despite being outrated in at least half our matches to date, we stand top of division 2. As the old hands at the club remind us, it is not so long since Kingston 1 were pleased to reach such heights.

Peter Andrews is captain of the Kingston first and second teams in the Surrey League

Epsom 2 v Kingston 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at the Epsom Christian Fellowship on 26 January 2026

It had been only a fortnight since our tightly fought home draw v Epsom 2, and less than two months since Kingston 1 were defeated by Epsom 1, with three of our side for this latest match and four of theirs also present on that occasion. But to plagiarise the comedian Eric Morecambe for elite chess, we may have been playing the same people, but not necessarily in the same order.

Epsom captain Marcus Gosling (pictured above, directing operations at the start of the match) used the full tolerance allowed by Surrey League rules to promote players in form, notably the fast-rising junior Lev Razhnou, who had added 100 points to his rating between early November and mid December. I had been one of his victims in that run, and had seen him grind down the Essex board 2 in a county U2050 match at the weekend in an endgame, usually a hallmark of class. So we reassured David Rowson, who was to face him, that if he got a result it would be one to treasure when Lev achieves stardom in a few years.

Martyn Jones on board 6 also drew a tough assignment, facing former British champion Peter Lee, while Stephen Moss, who had stepped in at a late stage for the unwell John Foley, was also outrated by his young opponent on board 7. We were clearly outrated on four boards, about evenly matched on two, and only had a significant advantage on board 3.

A challenging task was mitigated by winning the toss for the first time this season (in our 6th match), which gave us four Whites out of seven boards, and probably gave us the colours we wanted for the match-ups – three of our four outrated players had White, and in the middle order Rowson and I are just as likely to score with Black, while Jasper Tambini’s style may better suit White.       

Julian Way played a sensible if unexciting game against James Allison on top board giving us an early draw on one of our “uphill” boards. But Martyn Jones succumbed on board 6, though as he put it there were “plenty of learnings” against such an experienced opponent. I was unable to see much of the rest of the match because of the excitement in my own game on board 4 versus Gosling. Those of my team-mates who saw the game will probably have counted it as a win from early on, but given my previous game with Marcus it didn’t feel that way.

I emerged from my trance over this game to find that on board 3 Jasper Tambini had squashed Chris Wright in a game which carried a useful lesson about engine analysis.

On board 2, David Rowson’s game with Black against Lev Razhnou did not quite live up to its billing. There were some tactical slips on both sides, starting with David losing a pawn but taking the initiative in the middle game, and culminating in an ending in which his pawn advantage with a goodish bishop v knight and connected passed pawns on the kingside were winning, one might have thought easily. But even in endgames chess can be a difficult and cruel game. With both players in acute time trouble, White had one chance to turn the tables.

Thankfully I didn’t see that, or my nerves might not have been fit to drive home. As it was, I came round from my own game to find that we were now 3.5-1.5 ahead, with boards 5 and 7 still going. A draw from one of them would be sufficient to win the match.

On board 7, Stephen Moss had a fighting game with another rising Epsom junior, Maya Keen, in which he dodged several bullets.

Just as Stephen was congratulated by his team-mates for getting us over the line, Homayoon Froogh also delivered a draw. This was a fine result against Robin Haldane, a scourge of Kingston this season having already beaten Peter Hasson in the first-team match in December and Jasper Tambini in the second- team match in early January. Homayoon was never worse, and at the time it felt like a solid and accurate performance. So it was frustrating for him to show his effort to Mr Stockfish next day and find that he had missed an immediate win.

So we had won 4.5-2.5 despite being outrated, a great team effort celebrated with the doughnuts generously brought by Peter Lalic, who came to watch the end of the match. Almost all the games were hard and long, and several of them contained missed one-move opportunities to change the course of history. Which goes to show that chess is hard for humans, but that, along with humour between the teams and doughnuts, is what makes the game worth playing.  

Peter Andrews is Kingston captain in Surrey division 2

Kingston 1 v Epsom 1, Surrey League division 1 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 8 December 2025

Epsom were worried enough about this match to use some disinformation tactics in advance – we had been led by our Epsom informant to believe that Graeme Buckley and Susan Lalić would not be in the line-up, but rather that they would feature an array of strong juniors. But it was only a minor surprise to find them entering the Richard Mayo Centre at about 7.20pm, and as it turned out it was not a failure to prepare for those two Masters which cost us the match, but rather a collapse on the lower boards.

Epsom had drafted in on board 2 Chris Russell, newish to Surrey but well established in leagues in central London, so no Lalić family clash. Susan Lalić had White on board 3 against fellow IM Peter Large, and that game was a fairly peaceful and quick draw. But the others all went the distance.

My own game on board 8 against the fast-rising junior Lev Razhnou was an uphill struggle from early on which required my full attention, so the following account rests on the game scores rather than being able to report rising tension and depression through the evening.

The interest in my game lay in the evaluation of the position early and late on. Razhnou was tactically alert in the opening, and we soon reached the position in the diagram below in which I felt I was almost busted, affecting my mindset for the rest of the game.

I thought that I had done nobly to stay afloat as far as the position shown below after White’s 23rd move, and intermittent spectators felt the same.

Yet according to Stockfish, diagram 1 is only fractionally worse for White whereas soon after diagram 2 the roof fell in on the queenside. Black’s progress between the two diagrams came incrementally rather than in a stroke of brilliance on his part or incompetence on mine. Thereafter, I had some chance on the clock – he was down to three seconds at one point, and still thinking – but none on the board.

Boards 4 and 5, Zain Patel with White v Allison and Peter Hasson with Black v Robin Haldane, were similar in that the Kingston player outrated their opponent, outplayed them in the first half of the game, and then managed to lose, Zain perhaps through complacency, deferring castling for too long, and Peter through an endgame error which must have reflected time pressure. Around the same time, David Rowson on board 7 seems to have agreed a draw in a winning endgame:

The game was agreed drawn here. But the evaluation is -6, ie Black is winning. As we have seen on other occasions, it can be hard for the side trying to win to find exact moves when time is short, whereas the losing side can just react. The technique is to use the bishop to control the long diagonal to the last black square in front of the pawn, ie a1 to h8, while the black king can prevent the white bishop from settling at a3. Note that it is more difficult to win such an ending when the passed pawn is a centre pawn, because then the weaker side has enough squares on the shorter diagonal to escape the king.

Things were going better on the top boards. On board 1, David Maycock beat Graham Buckley with Black, not with the usual attacking cascade, but in [Peter] Lalić fashion, heading for a queenless middle game and exploiting several tactical slips to win material.

On board 2, the man himself won another game in which his masterful endgame skills are instructive:

That win meant we had a chance to save a draw if Jasper Tambini, who had White, could beat Epsom president Marcus Gosling on board 6. He had one fleeting chance to do so, which both players had missed, and then lost by pressing too hard for the win in a drawn rook and pawn ending. This was the opportunity:

Epsom’s win throws the league wide open, with every team having lost at least one match, and we will need to be at full strength when we travel there on 30 March.  

Peter Andrews captains Kingston’s first and second teams in the Surrey League