5th SCCU London Team Rapid Chess Championships played at St Luke’s Church, Hampstead on 27 June 2026
Above: Interior of St Luke’s (photograph: Brendan O’Gorman)
Kingston again won the major prize at this year’s London Team Championships organised by the Southern Counties Chess Association. The Major tournament comprised six rounds for teams of four, constrained to a team average rating of 2100 or less.
Our team in the Major comprised the new line-up of IM Peter Large, Ash Stewart, John Foley and Martyn Jones. The only member of our previous victorious squad was John, who played one game as a reserve in 2025. We were sporting a slightly diminished team compared to last year’s stars (Supratit Banerjee, Peter Lalić, Vladimir Li, John Bussmann), but Kingston secretary Alan Scrimgour did well to put together two teams, using his calculator for some fine tuning in team selection.
It all came down to the final game of the final round where a player from another team had to find checkmate with a bishop and knight against a king under extreme time pressure. Exciting stuff in the rarefied world of chess.
The rapidplay time control was 25 minutes plus 5 seconds increment per move. Due to late withdrawals only four evenly matched teams competed: in rating order, Streatham & Brixton (hereafter Streatham), Richmond & Twickenham (hereafter Richmond), Kingston, and Barnet Juniors (hereafter Barnet). The event was organised as a double-headed round robin: each team played each other twice, the second time with colours reversed. The first two teams were formidable opponents well known to us from league chess.
Rounds 1 and 2
In the opening double-header, Kingston faced the top-ranked Streatham. We were delighted to dispose of our rivals, winning the first match 3-1 and drawing the back-to-back match 2-2 with no losses. My opponent, Essex player John Hodgson, brother of grandmaster Julian, informed me that we had played each other six times since our first game as schoolboys in 1972, all draws. This was suspiciously detailed information indicating some deep preparation, but fortunately not that deep as we continued our tradition by agreeing to two draws after some cagey play.
Kingston might have done even better in the second match if Martyn Jones wasn’t such a nice fellow. His opponent’s phone beeped, which means a loss at this level of chess. The organisers reminded us of this in their introductory speech, but by the time the sound had traversed the airwaves, bouncing off the pillar arcade, to us at the other end of the church beneath the altar, the information was unintelligible – not least because of the dozens of whirring personal fans in the suffocating heat. Martyn allowed the game to continue without objection. As captain on the day, I belatedly advised the team along the lines of No More Mr Nice Guy. Of course, no phones made a beep thereafter.
Rounds 3 and 4
The next double-header was a derby against Richmond where we fared badly, scoring a 3-1 loss and a 2-2 draw. We fondly remembered Gavin Wall, the Richmond stalwart who sadly passed away a month after last year’s’ tournament from a suspected heart attack. Mike Healey scored twice against Peter Large on top board, which didn’t help Peter’s mood.
In Round 4, Richmond’s Caspar Bates (playing Black) surprised Ash with a piece sacrifice for two pawns. At first, Ash thought it was a mistake and didn’t want to believe that he had overlooked the fork tactic. After some thought, he found the rebuttal shown below. His win enabled Kingston to draw the match.
Rounds 5 and 6
Going into round 5, we knew were were on 50% but, absent the standings, we did not know whether we had any chance of the title. We feared the Barnet Juniors led by Yu Rock (who had a tournament performance rating of 2386, having notched up victories against each of the other top boards) and Lion Lebedev because they were clearly stronger than their ratings. The first of the matches against them was a 2-2 draw, so we were still on 50% – not very propitious for a title contender.
The current standings (above) were published for the first time just as we went into the last round. Surprisingly, each team was on five match points, having contrived to neutralise each other. Kingston was lying third on tie-break; Streatham and Richmond were half a game point ahead of us and we were one game point ahead of Barnet. We had to win the final match and hope other results went in our favour to have any chance of winning the championship.
My young opponent had beaten me in round 5 and offered an early draw in the final round, which I declined. I went for a kingside attack and (to my surprise) won quickly.
Martyn modestly thought he was fortunate to win in round 5 against the talented Hubert Bates, who then appears to have lost confidence and surrendered in round 6. Kingston were 2-0 up awaiting the results of the top two boards, which both looked drawish. What was happening in the other match?
Richmond were 2-1 down against Brixton and relying on Caspar Bates to checkmate Streatham’s Andrew Stone’s king with a knight and bishop in order to draw the match. This is a tricky challenge and not many people know the technique for an endgame which occurs only once every 6,000 games. Extra pressure arises because of the 50-move rule, which allows a player to claim a draw if 50 consecutive moves have passed for both sides without any captures or pawn movements.
I volunteered to record the move count using tally marks not just because I am a qualified arbiter but also because I was keen that there was a correct move count in such a vital game – vital to Kingston. Impressively, even though both players were on the increment, Caspar managed to deliver checkmate after 23 moves and so their match was drawn. Back at the other table, Peter and Ash brought home draws, so winning our Barnet match.
The final result was that we scored seven match points, pipping Streatham and Richmond with six points and a spirited Barnet Juniors team on five points. The closeness of the result may be better gleaned from the game score – we scored 13 game points compared to 12.5 for each of Streatham and Richmond. We won with an overall game score of just 54%.
Prize-giving
This victory was quite unexpected given the closeness of the teams going into the final round. Peter Large felt it was somewhat undeserved from his point of view. A man of high chess standards, he decided to depart before the award presentation. Martyn Jones also had to leave as he is soon to be a father.
Each winning team member received a shield. Martyn had also won the trophy for the best overall performance in the Major sector, having scored 5/6. The contribution of Ash Stewart on 4½/6 meant that, between them, our boards 4 and 2 scored 73% of Kingston’s points. Congratulations to them for their stellar performances.
Our second team, comprising Jon Eckert, Constantin Liesch, Stephen Moss and Aytek Koyun, played in the Intermediate section. They outperformed their starting rank by rising up two places to 10th out of 12. Particular mention to the plus scorers – Aytek with 4/6 and Stephen with 3/5.
Aftermath
After the prize ceremony, Ash, Stephen Moss and myself decamped to the charming Holly Bush pub in Hampstead where we made good our dehydration. The club plan is to visit all the pubs in Hampstead one by one each year. Stephen was a member of our second team team and was muttering something about his one defeat being a loss on time in what he insisted was a “totally won” position, an all-too-common refrain.
And also
Familiar Kingstonian faces at the event who were not playing for Kingston included Genc Tasbasi, Ed Mospan, Tom Mayers, Mike Healey, Robin Haldane, Tony Hughes, Maks Gajowniczek, Graham Keane and Marcus Baker. We are grateful to tournament controller Adam Raoof and organiser David Gilbert (who declared this his final outing as championship organiser after suffering a heart attack in the summer).
Top left: Genc Tasbasi; middle: Stephen Moss; right: Ed Mospan; bottom: Constantin Liesch (front right) and Jon Eckert (in pink shirt). Photographs: John Foley
