Alexander Cup semi-final played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 25 January 2024

This was the board 1 match-up in the Alexander Cup semi-final played at Kingston on 25 January, which the home side won 6-4. For a long period, onlookers assumed Mark Gray was winning this game as he had a big material plus, but, as John Saunders’ brilliant annotation shows, converting such an advantage when your pieces are uncoordinated is far from easy. Engines keep telling us a player has a “won” position, but chess is played by humans and the numbers don’t mean much. John enjoyed watching this game in real time, standing close to the players. Retired from competitive play for a decade or so, it brought back to him the full wonder – and anxiety – of playing chess, as well as the vast gulf between faltering human play and silicon certainties.

Coulsdon 1 v Kingston 1, Surrey League division 1, Coulsdon, 15 January 2024

The match was a curtain-raiser to the forthcoming semi-final in the Alexander Cup. Coulsdon brought along four juniors, with the talented Supratit Banerjee moving up to board 1 where he faced Kingston’s regular top board David Maycock. Supratit had done well at Hastings, where he drew with Kingston’s new signing Ameet Ghasi in the first round (see their game in the footnote). Ameet, who came a commendable third at Hastings, was full of praise for the youngster.

In the pre-match preparation, we identified the endgame as Supratit’s relative weak point. In a league match earlier in the year, John Foley had beaten Supratit from a level position in the endgame. David Maycock followed the plan and reached a theoretically level endgame position, which he then proceeded to win. This required some careful play, but when you know what you are doing chess can feel easy.

The first-round game at Hastings 23/24: Banerjee v Ghasi

Kingston 2 v South Norwood 1, Surrey League division 2, Willoughby Arms, Kingston, 4 December 2023

This was the final game to finish in Kingston second team’s 6-1 victory over South Norwood 1 – a result which encourages us to believe we can survive in this testing division (we were close to being relegated last year). John Foley came into this game off the back of two uncharacteristic defeats, and winning this thrilling encounter was a great restorative. Paul Dupré plays his part with some bravura attacking chess. A memorable meeting between two stalwarts of the game, and with a nice gloss on a game played in Surrey more than a century ago.

Creassey Tattersall v Henry Stephens Barlow (Surrey Championship, 1904) was played in Thornton Heath, south London. The game moves are incomplete but we have the attacking opening. With such a wonderful name, I had to check him out. Creassey went on to become an expert on Persian rugs. Barlow worked at the Admiralty. In 1900, Tattersall defeated Frederick Soddy in the Varsity Match. Soddy went on the win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921 for his work on radioactive isotopes.

Kingston v Epsom, Surrey League division 1, Willoughby Arms, Kingston, 27 November 2023

Epsom inflicted a chastening defeat on Kingston in this crucial division 1 match, but the bright spot for the home side was this victory on board 6 by Will Taylor over former British champion Peter Lee. The final moves were lost in a time scramble, unrecorded under the five-minute rule, but what we have demonstrates how Will achieved a winning position. A memorable scalp.

4NCL division 4 game played at the Mercure Hotel, Telford, on 19 November 2023

I do not relish the three-hour drive from Kingston to Telford to play in the 4NCL, in which Kingston partners with Chess in Schools and Communities under the able captaincy of Kate and Charlie Cooke, but this second-round game was memorable for me and reignited my interest in playing.

My opponent was educational psychologist and chess writer Barry Hymer, who was rated more than 200 points higher than me – I was 1763 ECF, he was 1975. He also had White. Life really isn’t fair, though my team-mate on board 1 in this match against Lancaster faced an even tougher proposition, up against IM Gediminas Sarakauskas, not the sort of player one would normally expect to be meeting in division 4. A case of what in opera is called “luxury casting”.

Barry immediately endeared himself to me by saying he had enjoyed my book. He also clearly knew all my quirks – laying out apple, Twix and water bottle on the table ready to consume them in the course of the afternoon. If I could eat a five-course meal at the board I would (absolutely banned by the arbiters at 4NCL, who allow no munching at the board). Barry said he would have been disappointed if I hadn’t come with a Twix – a motif in my book (The Rookie) when, after a surprise win against an experienced campaigner in Gibraltar, I convinced myself that eating a Twix during a game was the key to playing well (rather than, say, having an intimate knowledge of fashionable openings, an eye for complex middlegame tactics or some rudimentary sense of how to play the endgame).

I’m going to annotate this game, and apologise for its inadequacies. I want to show it because the long time control at 4NCL (especially compared to the thud and blunder of evening club chess) meant that for the first time in six or seven years I felt I was actually thinking properly (or almost properly) about chess – that zen moment when you become truly absorbed in a game. And in the endgame we reached a position which later came to fascinate me.

Normally once I have played a game I put it on my database, do some swift analysis with an engine (bad, I know, not to use my brain to work out all the variations) and then rarely look at it again. But I did return to this game and one crucial position in particular, shared it with friends and club-mates, and tried to think about it more critically than I usually do. I felt I was a chess player again.

Sixth-round game played in the Mindsports IM Group B at the London Mindsports Centre, London W6 on 18 February 2023

After a 10-year break from high-level chess, Vladimir Li returned to competitive action in this IM norm event played at the London Mindsports Centre in February 2023. He enjoyed a largely successful event, scoring 5/9, adding six Fide rating points and enjoying three wins, including this memorable one.

First-round game played at the Kingston Invitational on 24 July 2023

This was one of the games played in the first round of the Masters section at the 2023 Kingston Invitational. If Vladimir Li could win it, he knew his Fide rating would rise about 2300 and he would thus secure the FM title. With so much riding on the game, he had done some serious preparation and it paid dividends.

Surrey League division 5 (Minor Trophy) match played at the North Star, Chessington on 18 October 2023

This was a game played in division 5 of the Surrey League between two players with an ECF rating of around 1600. It is not chess of an especially exalted standard. There are mistakes aplenty, and the game is one of those typical evening-match rollercoasters where the evaluation oscillates wildly, especially as time runs short. Ed Mospan, a Kingston stalwart who has returned to the club this year after a pandemic-induced break, enjoyed the game, felt he learned a lot from it, and offered this annotation. It is evening chess, played at 75 minutes a side with a 10-second increment, in its rawest form. Anything can happen, and both sides will have chances. Ed makes the final error and could have reacted badly to losing a winning position. But he’s not made that way. Instead he makes the best of it and prepares for the next friendly encounter. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” as Nietzsche (who really should have played chess) so sagely put it.

Middlesex v Surrey under 2050 county match (board 1) played at All Saints Church, Child’s Hill, London NW2 on 14 October 2023

This was the opening county match of the season. The four home counties (Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Surrey) scrap it out to see who progresses to the national finals later in the season where they invariably play strong teams from Lancashire and Yorkshire in a remote Midlands location. The home team usually has a strong advantage in getting all their 16 players out. With our weaker team, the pressure was on me to perform.

Previously, we had played in the adjacent community hall of All Saints church. This time we played in the nave of the church itself. The setting was lovely except there was only one toilet in the vestry for 64 players (the under 1650 team was also playing), which was literally inconvenient. This gave me every incentive to finish my game early.

Surrey lost 10- 4. Match card

South Norwood v Kingston, Lauder Trophy, West Thornton Community Centre, 5 October 2023

This was a tremendous game played in the Lauder Trophy first-round match between Kingston and South Norwood. It was later described by a veteran Kingstonian as “one of the most amazing games I’ve ever seen”, and features three occasions when queens are trapped in the corner of the board. Peter Lalić’s win was enough to secure a 3-3 draw in the match, and to help Kingston through to the next round on board count. Since this was the board 1 match-up, winning here was crucial in securing the tie-break by 12-9.