Maidenhead D v Kingston C, Thames Valley League division X match played at St Luke’s Community Hall, Maidenhead on 24 February 2025
No one relishes the long trek to Maidenhead on a dark, wintry evening, but Kingston’s team in Div X of the Thames Valley League made light of it and came home with the spoils.
Sean Tay (pictured) maintained his good form with a win on top board; Mark Sheridan and Rob Taylor won smoothly on 2 and 3; and the only reverse was on board 4, where recent Kingston arrival Nette Robinson came unstuck against the highest-rated player in the Maidenhead line-up (why playing down on board 4, I wonder?). An excellent 3-1 victory, which always makes the long journey home more bearable.
Hounslow v Kingston, Thames Valley Knockout first round, due to be played at Hounslow on Thursday 20 February
There is sadly nothing to say about this match as it never took place. Hounslow had kindly agreed to Kingston’s earlier request for a deferment of the match, but when the time came to play – on a Thursday, an unusual playing day for both clubs – they were unable to raise a team they considered to be of sufficient strength and defaulted. A very unsatisfactory outcome, especially after Hounslow’s sporting gesture in allowing the match due to be played before Christmas to be postponed.
Kingston now proceed to the semi-final, where TVKO captain Alan Scrimgour (pictured) will need a powerful team against Epsom. A potentially even greater challenge would lie in the final, where Harrow – specialists in this competition and with a very strong line-up – already await.
Kingston 3 v Wallington, Surrey League division 4 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 17 February 2025
This was another solid performance by Ed Mospan’s team – a 3-3 draw against a club first team constitutes a very good result. The veteran Nick Edwards outmanoeuvred Alicia Mason on top board, but David Shalom and Adam Nakar drew against higher-rated opponents, new recruit Paul Seymour and the ever reliable Mark Sheridan drew on boards 4 and 5, and Rob Taylor (pictured), who is really finding his feet this season, netted the equaliser on board 6. A very satisfactory evening.
Wallington v Kingston, Lauder Trophy semi-final played at Wallington United Reformed Church on 12 February 2025
This match was always going to be tense. It goes with the territory in the Lauder Trophy, where the collective rating of the team cannot exceed 10,500. How do you divide up the rating cake: two strong players and four weaker players; six mid-rated players? The puzzle always takes a lot of solving.
Wallington and Kingston went for very similar teams – two strong players and four very decent players in the 1500-1750 bracket. A close match was guaranteed and so it proved, with Kingston squeezing home by 3.5-2.5 after an evening of high drama.
On top board, veterans David Rowson of Kingston and Nick Edwards of Wallington (and indeed Coulsdon) faced each other – amazingly, so David says, the first time they have ever met in a classical game despite both being an integral part of the Surrey chess scene for more than half a century.
Nick is a very principled, positional player and opened with d4, to which David replied with an unusual King’s Indian-type line. “Nick and I had a great set-to,” says David, “which we both enjoyed, with some rather unusual positions arising from what I think is called the KID Kramer System. After the game we spent a long time analysing it, but putting it through Stockfish it seems we assessed a lot of the positions wrongly.”
This was a key position. Should Black take the pawn on h4? “Maybe I should have taken,” says David, “but it looked very risky to me.”
Alan Scrimgour had White and a hefty rating advantage on board 2, and his assured win against the very solid David Jones was vital to the Kingston cause. This was how Alan succinctly summed up the game afterwards: “Careful manoeuvring around the queenside majority combined with pressure on the IQP [isolated queen’s pawn] led to win of the exchange. My opponent, despite his time shortage, responded with a kingside sortie that White had under control.” This was the game’s denouement. White is on top, so Black decides to go for broke.
Meanwhile on board 3, Jon Eckert was defending an Exchange French. He felt it was drawish from an early stage, but there were some late complications and he had winning chances. But Jon also recognised that we probably had our noses in front in the match – with good positions with White on boards 2 and 4 – and offered his opponent a draw, which was accepted. The fact that Kingston’s players were all taking stock of the match situation was one of the great positives of this win. Chess is a very individual game, good players are often egoists, and the match context can sometimes be forgotten.
Kingston’s one reverse came on board 6, where Aziz Sannie lost to the promising Wallington junior Mohamed Nasrudeen Meeran. Aziz went the exchange (rook for knight) down and, try though he might, couldn’t generate much counterplay as his opponent liquidated to a won endgame.
On board 5 Kingston captain Ed Mospan was facing Luke Glinton in another match-up between players with almost identical ratings. Neither could establish a significant edge in a series of blocked positions and a draw was agreed. Another important result with Black for Kingston.
That left David Bickerstaff (pictured above on the right of the picture, with Ed Mospan beside him, in a previous match at South Norwood), to put the ball in the back of the net, which is exactly what he did. David had White on board 4 against the slightly higher-rated Robert Davies, but he never gave his opponent a chance with a perfect pawn storm against Black’s KIng’s Indian Defence. Here is the game which took Kingston into the Lauder Trophy final, where we will face Coulsdon, with annotations by David.
Kingston 4 v Epsom 5, Surrey League division 5 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingstonon 10 February 2025
On paper this promised to be a very close match. In reality, Kingston 4 were swept aside by Epsom 5, showing just how much strength in depth dynamic president Marcus Gosling’s club are developing. The saving grace for Kingston was a fine win for Nette Robinson (pictured above – she is a singer and artist, as well as a chess player), who was making her Kingston debut. That at least saved us from the ignominy of a whitewash.
We shall be brief with the obsequies. David Shalom was defeated by the highly rated James Pooler on board 1; Paul Seymour, a new recruit to Kingston, lost with Black to Pietro Silke Balerna on board 2; Sean Tay had winning, then drawing, chances on board 3 against Robert Fairhall but both evaded him; Mark Sheridan on board 4 was well in the game against the experienced Alistair Mackenzie but fell at the final fence and was checkmated; and on board 6 Anqi Yang was quickly in difficulties against the officially unrated Gary Allen.
We live to fight another day, but are impressed by Epsom’s large cohort of 1600-rated players. The Surrey League’s “Minor” division – the official name of Div 5 – is not really so minor after all. It’s a shark pool!
CSC/Kingston 1 beat Scottish flagbearers Alba to get on the scoreboard in the first division and raise hopes that we might after all survive in this shark pool
Well, we will not be whitewashed. After a tough opening weekend when we lost both matches in the very testing 4NCL division 1, we finally got on the scoreboard on the second weekend in Peterborough. We were beaten 6.5-1.5 by Guildford Youth on the Saturday, but on Sunday we defeated the Scottish side Alba 5-2. We were helped by a weather-induced default, but even without that we would have won the match.
French FM Ulysse Bottazzi made an excellent debut for CSC/Kingston against Wood Green Youth, drawing with the very strong Polish-born FM (surely soon to be IM) Maciej Czopor, winner of the 2024 Kingston Invitational. The prodigious Supratit Banerjee went one better even than that, beating Polish player Tomasz Sygnowski on board 8. Supratit’s game was highly tactical, and it hinged on the position shown below. Sygnowski playing Black is actually on top at this point, but goes wrong in an exchange of pieces and Supratit emerges with a winning advantage.
We had three winners against Alba on Sunday – David Maycock, Roland Bezuidenhout and Supratit again, though this time by default (an Alba player had failed to get down to Peterborough because of a storm on Saturday which disrupted rail links). David’s game against Declan Shafi was brief and brutal, courtesy of two killer bishops.
Roland enjoyed a tremendous win with Black against IM and eight-times Scottish champion Roddy McKay. After positional skirmishing, it suddenly becomes very tactical and White’s position collapses.
CSC/Kingston 2 had a terrific weekend in division 3 (Knights), winning both their matches to put themselves into early promotion contention. On board 1, Peter Finn again won both his games to make him 4/4 so far this season. CSC/Kingston 2 dispatched a strong North West Eagles team with surprising ease on Saturday, but had more difficulty on Sunday, narrowly defeating a Coventry side who on paper were a good deal weaker than their opponents the previous day.
CSC/Kingston 3 had a familiar weekend in division 4, which is a Swiss tournament whereas divisions 1, 2 and 3 (divided into Knights and Bishops) are 12-team all-play-alls. CSC/Kingston 3 won against heavily outrated Barnet Knights D on Saturday, but that propelled them up the table and into a tough match with Iceni 2 on Sunday. CSC/Kingston and Iceni had identical average ratings of 1903, but in a well-contested encounter Iceni squeezed out a win by 3.5-2.5 to leave CSC/Kingston 3 in joint 14th place in the 32-team division.
The next 4NCL weekend is on 15/16 February, with the first and second teams playing in Coventry and the third team back in action in Peterborough.
Kingston B v Hounslow A, Thames Valley League division X match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 3 February 2025
This was a well-contested match between two strong teams. Kingston’s 4-2 victory, to make it 6/6 in Thames Valley division 2 so far this season, was an excellent result against a club first team and confirmed that promotion to division 1 for our B team is a live possibility.
On board 1, Peter Andrews with Black closed out a canny draw against the very sold Mateusz Dydak. “I was fairly confident we’d have the edge lower down,” said Peter afterwards, “and Alicia was already ahead when I drew.” This was the position in which a draw was agreed. The engine adjudges Black to have an edge, though it is perhaps not immediately clear why.
David Rowson also drew with Sesh Vaddadi on board 2, but this was a far meatier tussle. There were no undue alarms for David, but despite a time advantage he became a little anxious, perhaps because his opponent had the outside pawn. “I never got the attack I was hoping for and had to be a bit careful near the end,” he explained. “I was glad I found 29. b3.” That occurred in this position, immediately before David’s draw offer.
On board 6 Alicia Mason was indeed winning with White against Eugene Gregorio, but she had a huge time disadvantage – Eugene invariably plays at blitz speed – and, though the exchange up, had to contend with a lively knight. Eugene did have one opportunity to equalise, highlighted by Alicia in her post-game analysis, but happily for us did not take it. It occurred in the position below.
We now had our noses in front and the other boards looked promising too. Alan Scrimgour, with White against Hounslow captain David White on board 4, played an uncompromising game and built a space advantage early on. David ventured an overambitious move in the position below and Alan took full advantage.
Jon Eckert was playing with great panache with Black against Hounslow veteran Leon Fincham on board 5. Give Jon the initiative and he will grab it with both hands, which is what happened here. Using the bishop pair to good effect, he put Leon under considerable pressure and, with time starting to become a factor, Leon thought he saw a tactic that would lead to a back-rank mate. Sadly for him, he had miscalculated and the queen sac he thought was winning actually lost on the spot.
We had won the match and, with Stephen Lovell holding a slight advantage with Black against the capable Calum Kinloch on board 3, it looked like the scoreline would be emphatic. But time took its toll here too. Stephen had two golden opportunities to win, but, with just a few minutes left on the clock after a testing three-hour game, both went begging. The win disappeared and then, as so often happens, the draw went the same way.
“Time pressure got the better of me,” said Stephen afterwards. “55…d4 was of course a horrible blunder – explained by the fact that I wasn’t looking in that direction, and you somehow don’t expect to fall victim to a knight fork when you yourself have a knight.” An unfortunate reverse, but Stephen will take it philosophically and come back stronger – he is playing league chess regularly again for the first time in a decade. An absorbing game, a hard-fought match and a welcome 4-2 victory over the only A side in Thames Valley division 2.
Kingston C v Richmond E, Thames Valley League division X match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 3 February 2025
This was a very good victory for Jon Eckert’s Kingston C side. Sean Tay won smoothly on board 1, winning decisive material advantage and neutralising his opponent’s passed pawn. Jaden Mistry, with rook and pawn against two pieces, drew on board 2. Mark Sheridan won well on board 3, and Rob Taylor squeezed out a rook and pawn endgame on board 4. That made the margin of victory a comfortable one – 3.5-0.5. Captain Eckert, meanwhile, was winning his own game against Hounslow B to complete a very satisfying evening.
Ealing B v Kingston B, Thames Valley League division 2 match played at Actonians Sports Club, London W5 on 27 January 2025
This was a very tight, competitive match, and that Kingston B managed to run out 4-2 winners was a great achievement. We are now 5/5 in division 2 of the Thames Valley League, though with nine fixtures still to go we should not yet put the champagne on ice.
We were admittedly helped by the fact that Ealing lost their board 6 very late due to illness. Their substitute Aleksei Garifov performed well in the opening and was holding his own, but then misplaced his queen and omitted to castle. Making his debut for Kingston, Homayoon Froogh (father of Zubair, who was playing on board 5) needed no second invitation to launch a decisive tactic.
The Ealing player did not choose the best continuation, suffered even heavier material loss and resigned after 28 moves. A winning debut for Homayoon and an encouraging early lead for Kingston. The other five games, however, were fiercely contested and went on late into the night.
Froogh Junior had a fascinating struggle with Sagnik Chatterjee on board 5. This game was pivotal to the match because if could have gone either way deep into the rook and pawn endgame with which it concluded. The position shown below is probably drawn and there were points earlier where Black could surely have drawn by repetition.
But Sagnik is young, the game had been very competitive and the juices were flowing. He banked everything on his a-pawn and rushed his king over to support it. But he underestimated the power of d6, defended inaccurately in a time scramble and was overwhelmed by White’s kingside pawns before he could get his own passed pawn home.
Frooghs 2 Ealing 0. But Ealing were winning on board 3, where Jack Sheard was getting the better of Jon Eckert. The position below is level, but Jon, playing White, then goes wrong and the game is lost in the space of a few moves.
Alicia Mason, with Black, played well against the higher-rated Matthew Georgiou and in the position below has excellent drawing chances, but, with time starting to become a concern, one tiny slip put her on the back foot and she never quite recovered.
Alicia, who returned from the US last year, is taking her chess very seriously and knows that the secret to improvement is to learn from your losses, so what did she learn from this one? “This was a frustrating game to lose,” she admitted afterwards, “especially since the blunder came right at the moment where I missed the opportunity to get an advantage. The main thing I want to take away from this game is how I handle the clock. I want to avoid the temptation of rushing my moves in order to stay ahead on the clock if my opponent is short of time, and to remember to check all the forcing moves, whatever the situation. Had I done that here, I would have found the capture on a3 followed by d5, which I realised I’d missed as soon as I played 26…Nc7.”
The match hinged on boards 1 and 2: Peter Andrews with White on 1 against Ealing captain Xavier Cowan, and John Bussmann, who is showing renewed enthusiasm and good form this season, against Hristo Colov on 2. The latter was a high-class affair, but, as so often in evening club chess, tiredness and clock pressure decided the outcome, with White blundering horribly (is that a tautology?).
So to the battle of the board ones – a repeat of the same match-up in the reverse fixture when Kingston were at home last November, and with the same result – wily veteran Andrews got the better of the young gun Cowan. We pick up the game on Black’s 16th move when, says Peter, “d5, which I expected, blew up the centre in my favour. I guess Black felt under a little pressure as I had gained space without allowing him chances.” The analysis below is Peter’s.
Peter rushed off for his customary post-game whisky to calm his shredded nerves and that was that. A very good 4-2 win away against a capable side. If we are not careful we might have to start considering our chances of being promoted to Thames Valley division 1, and pose the question of whether we would want two competing teams in the top division. But not yet: there are still many battles ahead.
Kingston 4 v Ashtead 2, Surrey League division 5 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingstonon 19 January 2025
This was an exciting and well-contested match, with Ashtead 4 eventually emerging as narrow winners by 3.5-2.5. But there were plenty of hard-luck stories for Kingston along the way, and our fourth team can be proud to have run a club second team so close.
The board 1 clash was especially interesting, with two Kingston players – Alicia Mason and Jon Eckert (here turning out for Ashtead) – going head to head. Jon played the French Defence and was slightly better out of the opening, but Alicia fought back tenaciously and established a plus. But with time starting to dwindle a draw was agreed, which is surely as it should be when two Kingston players with similar ratings meet.
The experienced Chris Perks got the better of Rob Taylor on board 6; Mark Sheridan had a fine win over Nick Thynne on 5; and Adam Nakar and Aziz Sannie drew with Adrian Waldock and Robert Jurjevic respectively on 3 and 4. Adam and Aziz were, though, kicking themselves for letting the full point elude them. Aziz certainly had a winning rook and pawn endgame, but let it slip in time trouble.
The match was decided by the board 2 encounter between Kingston’s David Shalom and Ashtead’s Daniel Richmond. In a long game which became a battle between the heavy armour of queen and rooks, David played well with Black and was on top for most of the time. But his opponent didn’t worry about Black’s long-term pawn advantage. He kept presenting problems and looking to attack, and eventually it paid off when David blundered in time trouble. An annoying loss, which David as ever took phlegmatically. If only every chess player could accept the knocks with such equanimity.
