Two wins at weekend 4 launch CSC/Kingston 2 into the division 4 promotion mix at 4NCL

Weekend 4 at 4NCL was a triumph for CSC/Kingston 2. With two wins – the one on Saturday against a team which massively outgraded them – we now suddenly, and perhaps just a little surprisingly, have a chance of promotion going into the final weekend at the end of April, though some very tough teams lie in wait. Both CSC/Kingston 1 and CSC/Kingston 2 are now in the promotion mix in divisions 3 and 4 at that final weekend, which promises to be edge-of-the-seat stuff.

The team’s victory on Saturday against War and Piece A was remarkable. The average rating gap was more than 250 points, which logically pointed to a convincing victory for War and Piece. But the CSC/Kingston team had other ideas. Peter Hasson, who has had a tremendous season at 4NCL, beat a 2100-rated played on board 2; Ewan Wilson and John Carter took the spoils of boards 3 and 5; and Petr Vachtfeidl and Nick Grey recorded important draws on boards 4 and 6 – all against much higher-rated opponents. An unforgettable triumph which ignited CSC/Kingston 2’s season.

Celtic Tigers 2 were on paper weaker opposition on Sunday, with CSC/Kingston this time the stronger team by an average of 260 points. We won reasonably comfortably, though the fact that the score was once again 4-2 demonstrated how dangerous it is to make assumptions in chess based on ratings. Who would have predicted ahead of the weekend that matches against two teams so far apart in strength would have produced the same result?

Hasson once again won on board 2, young Max Selemir was victorious on board 5, and Ewan Wilson followed up his success on Saturday with a draw with Black against Celtic Tigers’ strong board 1. But credit to Celtic Tigers 2 for draws against much higher-rated players on the other three boards. Two matches that could not have been more different, but the net result is that CSC/Kingston 2 now have a fantastic opportunity at the final 4NCL weekend, when three tough matches will be played over three days.

Stephen Moss

Superb 4NCL weekend for CSC/Kingston 1, who recorded another two victories to move to join top of Division 3 West. All to play for going into the final weekend next month

It was another impressive 4NCL weekend for CSC/Kingston 1, with two vital wins against good opposition – the Warwickshire Select 2 team on Sunday are one of the higher-rated sides in the division. Giampiero Amato was successful on both days; Peter Finn lost on top board on Saturday but roared back with a win against his highly rated opponent on Sunday; Tom Ferrand, Clive Frostick and Chris Rice also recorded important victories on Saturday; but there was an admirable solidity and consistency right across a very experienced team.

With the powerful Warwickshire Select 1 surprisingly losing to West is Best 2 on Sunday, the promotion race is now wide open and the final weekend on 29 April to 1 May (three matches over the extended Bank Holiday weekend) is going to be tremendous. CSC/Kingston 1 will play the three other strongest teams in the division – Warwickshire Select 1, West is Best 2 and Chessable White Rose 3. It will be high-stakes stuff, with promotion to the chess big time as the prize, but at least our fate is in our hands.

To get this close to promotion is a remarkable achievement given that CSC/Kingston 1 started the season in division 4 and only entered division 3 when another team dropped out. We missed the first weekend, when we would have been pretty well guaranteed two wins against relatively weak opposition, and had to settle for two nominal “draws” (the organisers made the two matches 3-3, giving us two points rather than four). Those lost points could yet be crucial in the promotion fight, but we must put that out of our minds and concentrate on winning the final three matches against our closest promotion rivals next month. Whatever happens, it’s going to be a thriller.

Stephen Moss

Two wins by Peter Hasson ensure a successful weekend for CSC/Kingston 1 to keep their promotion hopes alive, but the second team struggle as life in division 4 gets tougher

CSC/Kingston 1 didn’t expect to be playing in division 3 of the 4NCL this season – their promotion was a fortuitous one after another team dropped out – but so far they are making a wonderful fist of it, and by winning both matches at this third 4NCL weekend they kept their outside hopes of a further promotion alive.

The Saturday match against Brown Jack was tough. CSC/Kingston had a healthy rating advantage, but Brown Jack (named after the pub in Wroughton, near Swindon, where it meets, which presumably is itself named after the famous racehorse of the 1930s) fought hard, and five of the six games were drawn. Only Hasson managed a win, but that was enough to give CSC/Kingston a vital victory by 3.5-2.5.

Sunday’s match was more straightforward – a 4.5-1.5 victory over Shropshire & Friends, with wins for Peter Finn, Clive Frostick and Hasson again. The weekend left CSC/Kingston joint second in the table with three other teams – a remarkable performance given that the team did not take part in the first weekend and were given two half-point byes. Both the byes were awarded against teams in the lower half of the table who we would have hoped to beat, and that may come back to haunt us at the end of the season. But for the moment the mood is upbeat and hopes of a second successive promotion high.

CSC/Kingston 2, who were not as strong as on the two previous weekends, found the going harder, though to lose on Saturday by only 3.5-2.5 against the higher-rated Full Ponty team was a very creditable performance. On paper, CSC/Kingston had a much easier task against Barnet Knights C on Sunday. But ratings mean little where juniors are concerned, and Barnet’s youth-orientated team gave a very good account of themselves, drawing the match 3-3. Nick Grey had a good win and, having drawn with Black with a higher-rated player on Saturday, enjoyed a good weekend.

CSC/Kingston 2 are now joint tenth in the table and have little realistic hope of promotion. But we always saw this season as a tentative return after the pandemic and, if the club can revert to running three teams next year, the hope will be to field a stronger second team that will target promotion and a third team that can both play with less pressure and give game time at 4NCL’s pleasingly long time control to newer players.

Stephen Moss

Supersub Foley inspires CSC/Kingston 1 to dual wins as the team acclimatises itself to the heady heights of division 3

The unexpected elevation to division 3 of the 4NCL has not fazed CSC/Kingston 1, who won their third- and fourth-round matches at the weekend and are now eyeing another step up. It was a tremendous result after a week of uncertainty over who would actually be in the team at Daventry.

A few days before, the situation looked grim. Star player Peter Finn had Covid and another strong player had dropped out. All sorts of stopgaps were being considered, but would have been little more than sticking plasters given the strength of the league’s division 3, to which we were promoted at the end of 2022 when another team dropped out.

Happily, the fears did not materialise. Indeed it was a triumphant weekend for the team, who thumped Ashfield 1 5.5- -0.5 on Saturday (Ashfield recorded a minus score because they defaulted a board and were accordingly penalised) and then defeated Oxford 2 in a much closer match on Sunday.

The key to the success was that the talismanic Finn had recovered from Covid and pronounced himself fit to play, and Kingston president John Foley stepped in to replace the indisposed player. Foley admirably volunteered to cover the default on Saturday, so that his five team-mates all got games, and then won a long encounter on Sunday to secure a 4-2 victory.

The two wins leave the team on six points after four rounds – we were given one-point byes in the first two rounds, played before the promotion had been agreed. There are several sides which on paper are stronger than CSC/Kingston 1 and they have a head start because we missed the opening weekend, but after these two victories we are breathing down the necks of the leaders. Warwickshire Select 1 will be favourites, but at least we now have an opportunity to challenge for back-to-back promotions.

Stephen Moss

CSC/Kingston 2 win on Saturday but lose on Sunday against very strong opposition to leave them joint third in the table after the first two 4NCL weekends

Even division 4 of the 4NCL can be very strong, as the new CSC/Kingston team discovered at the weekend. On Saturday, against the Gloucestershire-based club of Wotton Hall, we were outrated on every board but still managed a miraculous 4-2 victory, with wins for Maurice Lawson, Petr Vachtfeidl and Jon Eckert, and fighting draws on the top two boards by Daniel Sparkes and Peter Hasson against opponents rated 2200 or more. A tremendous performance by the team, ably marshalled as ever by Kate and Charlie Cooke.

On Sunday the opposition, Average Wood Pushers A, were even stronger. All their players were rated above 2000 and their average rating was 2099 – surely more than good enough for division 3, to which they look destined to win promotion. We were outgraded by an average of 270 points a board, and went down to an honourable 4.5-1.5 defeat, with another excellent win for Petr Vachtfeidl and a fine draw for Peter Hasson against another player rated 2200. Both Vachtfeidl and Hasson had memorable weekends.

On the other boards, Maurice Lawson fell foul of some neat tactics by Aidan Rawlinson; Max Selemir launched a bold attack that didn’t quite work out as his opponent mobilised his bishop pair to good effect; and Jon Eckert’s Grand Prix attack made little headway against Mitchell Burke’s expertly played Sicilian. But the prime idiot of the day was me, as I managed to resign against Yaoyao Zhu (rated 2056) in what I later discovered was a drawn position, as shown below.

It looks hopeless – at least I thought so. And, even though I had oodles of time, I didn’t bother to calculate or count the moves. It actually ends in forced stalemate: 47… Kb6 48. Ke5 Kc6 49. Kf6 Kd6 50. Kg7 Ke6 51. Kxh7 Kf7 52. Kh8 Kf8 53. h7 Kf7 1/2-1/2

I am so mortified I have had to share this Réti-ish position with the world immediately as a sort of catharsis. Don’t trust your eyes; trust your brain! Calculate, calculate, calculate. Or as Tartakower might have said: “No one ever drew a game by resigning.” I am utterly furious with myself. Bang goes the prospect of sleep tonight. What a desperately painful game chess is.

So a good weekend for CSC/Kingston 2, but a very bad weekend for me. Maybe it really is time to retire!

Stephen Moss

The new CSC/Kingston team win four matches out of four at their opening 4NCL weekend, with the first team recording perfect 6-0, 6-0 victories

Kingston has long pondered entering a team in the over-the-board 4NCL (we actually won the online version in 2020), but the distance to venues and the fact that quite a number of Kingston players were already attached to other teams were disincentives. This season we finally plucked up the courage to do it and found an imaginative way to make it work – forging an alliance with the well-established Chess in Schools and Communities (CSC) squad and running joint teams, expertly marshalled by Kate and Charlie Cooke (who has joined the Kingston club) and playing under the banner of CSC/Kingston.

There has long been a connection between the two organisations: Kingston president John Foley captained the inaugural CSC team; club chair Alan Scrimgour is a first-team stalwart; Jon Eckert and Nick Grey are second-team regulars; Martin Jogstad, Max Selemir, Hayden Holden and I have now joined the ranks, and we hope that over time more Kingston players will sign up, joining the 20 or so players on the Cookes’ squad list. CSC ran three teams before the pandemic. Currently, it has two, but the intention is to revert to (at least) three as the squad grows.

The opening weekend – played on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 November at the Mercure Court Hotel in Daventry – for the newly minted CSC/Kingston outfit could not have gone better. CSC/Kingston 1 won both its matches, against War and Piece B on Saturday and Anglian Avengers 2 on Sunday, by a perfect score of 6-0.

This was the only weekend CSC/Kingston 1 will play in division 4, as it has been awarded a berth vacated by another team in division 3 (west) for the remainder of the season (the competition comprises 11 rounds over five weekends and concludes on 1 May). Given the strength of CSC/Kingston 1, with FM Martin Jogstad, Peter Finn (whose Fide rating is 2175) and plenty of other very strong players to back them up, this is a very positive move for the team, which should be able to hold its own in division 3 and might even start eyeing the rarefied heights of division 2 if things go well and the leading players make themselves available for winter treks to distant hotels at the edge of motorway junctions.

The second team also won both its matches, though admittedly given the rating disparities with our opponents this was to be expected. It was, however, far from plain sailing. On Saturday, we beat Crowthorne B 4-2, but on board one Crowthorne’s Harvey Duckers downed the experienced Giampiero Amato, who was rated more than 100 points above him. Daniel Shek also defended well to earn a draw against CSC/Kingston’s Charlie Cooke, and Jon Eckert had to work hard in a long rook-and-pawn endgame to hold out against Crowthorne’s Shree Rao.

The following day, CSC/Kingston 2 beat She Plays to Win Uni by 4.5 to 1.5, with wins for Amato, Max Selemir, Charlie Cooke and your correspondent. Eckert, despite being exhausted after spending most of the weekend driving up and down the M1, defended expertly to draw another long rook-and-pawn endgame in which his youthful opponent was pushing for a win.

A tremendous first weekend for Kingston in the 4NCL that bodes well for the club’s future in the competition. We would like to thank CSC for allowing us to be partners in their excellent and ambitious team, and pay tribute to the tireless organisational work of Kate and Charlie Cooke. From personal experience, I know how tough it is to get six or seven chess players from Kingston to Ealing or Hounslow vaguely on time, so to get a dozen or more bodies to the middle of England 11 times a season does not even bear thinking about. Organising the Normandy Landings must have been more straightforward.

Stephen Moss