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

Kingston 3 v Ashtead 2, Surrey League division 4 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 8 December 2025

This meeting in the Centenary Trophy, division 4 of the Surrey League, saw two relatively strong teams pitted against each other, and the 5-1 victory for Ed Mospan’s Kingston 3 side was a considerable achievement. A very welcome one, too, on a night when Kingston 1 suffered an unexpected and painful defeat to Epsom 1, the latest in a string of reverses for the club’s higher-rated teams.

Recent recruit Xavier Cowan (pictured above, foreground left), who is already doing great things at Kingston, beat Ashtead’s very capable Tom Barton with Black on board 1. The opening was a very interesting line of the Sicilian and in this position White has a healthy advantage, but he goes for a tactic which doesn’t quite work.

Homayoon Froogh continued his tremendous winning run with victory over Ashtead captain Bertie Barlow on board 2. He grabbed a pawn in the opening and, once White had made a couple of ill-advised trades, never looked back.

Martyn Jones drew with Black against the very experienced Adrian Waldock on board 3 – like Homayoon, Martyn is having a terrific spell – and I drew with White against Ashley Wilson on board 4. In time-honoured fashion, I missed a likely win because I omitted an important intermezzo in the position below.

That made it 3-1 to Kingston, and Genc Tasbasi and Dieter McDougall completed an emphatic win with victories in well-contested games on boards 5 and 6. It’s still early days of course, but with a team of this strength and confidence Kingston 3 could have a shot at winning the Centenary Trophy this season. Promotion would be useful as we have a lot of players who would benefit from games in division 3.

Stephen Moss

Hammersmith v Kingston A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at the Mindsports Centre, London W6 on 4 December 2025

Hammersmith fielded their strongest team so far this season and we were without several key players, so a 4-2 defeat was not surprising. Kingston captain Peter Large, who quite rightly demands very high standards, said it was a hammering, but I felt it was less emphatic than that: a chastening defeat which suggests that winning a fourth successive Thames Valley title this season will be far from easy. Trappy away visits to Ealing and Maidenhead beckon in the next month, and we will need to be at our most resilient.

John Foley, with Black on board 6, was blown away by Sergiy Teslya, who we discovered afterwards had prepared a line against John’s usually trusty Caro-Kann. There was nothing subtle about his kingside blitz, but it was mightily effective, producing this horrible position (for Black) and a quick finish.

On board 2, Peter Lalić had a short but intriguing draw with White against Fide master Michael Fernandez. When I looked at Peter’s position (see diagram below), I thought he had good attacking possibilities. White’s pieces are well coordinated and castling looks dangerous, so what does Black do?

On board 5, Peter Andrews had White against Maria Alexandra-Ciocan. It was a tight struggle, but after establishing a healthy advantage in the middle game Peter missed a winning chance on move 30. The annotations below are Peter’s.

Boards 3 and 4 were going less well for Kingston. Zain Patel had White against the experienced Alistair Hill on board 3, but it always felt as if he was a little behind after the opening, though he sought counterplay throughout. He came very close to building a powerful kingside attack, but was hampered by time trouble and eventually Ali was able to exchange queens, defuse the threats and establish a material advantage that led to White’s resignation. That made it 3-1 to Hammersmith and meant they could not now lose.

Jasper Tambini has been under the cosh and short of moves with Black on board 4 against Gaston Franco for some time, and at no point did it look likely that we would win this game, so defeat in the match was a near inevitability with half an hour of the three-hour session still left to play. Franco played a highly positional game and didn’t allow Jasper, who prefers a more tactical struggle, any oxygen. White won a pawn in the middle game and just squeezed, establishing a winning endgame. A very professional performance by a strong player.

It was left to Kingston captain Peter Large to put a respectable gloss on the scoreline. With Black on board 2 against Thomas Bonn’s Ruy Lopez, Peter ceded a pawn for an initiative, and there followed a tactically complicated struggle which could have gone either way.

That made the final result 4-2 to Hammersmith, who go top of the Thames Valley division 1 table ahead of Maidenhead. We are currently third but have games in hand, and in any case the season is still in its early stages. It does, though, look as if the battle for the title will be extremely hard fought, with any team able to beat any other and home advantage potentially counting for a lot. It promises to be very exciting … and extremely stressful. But we will give it our best shot in an effort to retain our title.

Stephen Moss

Kingston 2 v Surbiton 1, Surrey League division 2 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 1 December 2025

Having beaten Surbiton only 10 days earlier on their home ground, and with the likelihood that they would be weaker away from home, Kingston 2 approached this match with a degree of confidence. As we shall see, that confidence was justified on the ratings difference between the teams and on the run of play, but not in the final result.

For the fourth consecutive match, Kingston lost the toss in a seven-board Surrey Division 2 match, so having Black on four boards and White on three. Having an odd number of boards and a toss rather than predetermined colours which give a 50/50 split over the season does seem an anomaly. But we had overcome that disadvantage on the three previous occasions.

David Rowson quickly equalised with Black on board 1 against David Scott. Jaden Mistry, on board 7, reached what looked like a drawn rook and pawn ending in which his opponent Alexey Markov had a passed a-pawn but Jaden had a four to three majority on the kingside. Jaden pushed his majority and penetrated with his king, but perhaps pushed too hard for the win and went down to defeat. However, Homayoon Froogh soon netted the equaliser with a win on board 6 against Malcolm Groom. Having built up a strong and lasting kingside attack, he missed the chance of a spectacular sacrificial win here.

Instead, Homayoon took no chances and kept the pressure on, and was eventually rewarded when Black cracked and blundered a piece. 1-0

But there followed a series of disappointments in which, as football statisticians might say, expected goals failed to turn into the real thing. On board 5, Alan Scrimgour found a nice tactic to win a queen against Andrew Boughen.

With the white pieces on board 4, John Foley had found another of his trademark exchange sacrifices against Graham Alcock to reach a winning endgame. But a single mistake in the endgame cost the win.

My game with Black on board 3 against Nick Faulks was even worse. I have a substantial plus score against Nick, having a couple of times got away with murder, so he might regard this as evening up, but it was nevertheless galling with the match on the line.

That left Jasper Tambini (pictured above, right) needing to win with White on board 2 against Neil Davies to save the match. Having had his attacking chances resisted, the game came down to a bishops-of-opposite-colour ending with White a pawn up. One pawn is not usually sufficient, but Jasper outplayed his opponent in the blitz finish to create chances. The moves at the critical juncture were not recorded, but we believe the following position was reached.

Now 1. e7 drew, because after 1… Kd7 2. b7 Bxb7 3. Kxb7 h4, the black pawn reached h2 forcing Bxh2 and allowing Kxe7 before the white king could guard the e-pawn. Instead 1. b7 would have won, because the black king cannot easily get at the white bishop and pawn, and the white king can get to d5 to guard the e-pawn. Straightforward in the cold light of day, but not so easy when you are playing on the increment and your mind is scrambled after a tense three-hour struggle.

So a match which could easily have been won 5-2 had been lost 4-3. Taking the two matches against Surbiton together, it is still a decent effort to split the points with a first team, but it could so easily have been better.   

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

Kingston 4 v Coulsdon 3, Surrey League division 5 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 1 December 2025

In a difficult week for Kingston – with defeats for the first team against Hammersmith and the second team against Surbiton – this victory for Kingston 4 against Coulsdon 3 in the Surrey Minor Trophy provided a chink of light. But it was mighty close against a young and enthusiastic Coulsdon team, with Kingston winning 3.5-2.5.

Alexander Chmelev, an excellent addition to the club this season, led the way with a win on board 1. Colin Lyle and Nette Robinson enjoyed good wins on boards 4 and 5, and it was left to David Shalom to secure the vital half-point with a draw on board 2. A great result for Ed Mospan and his team in an otherwise disappointing week for the club.

Stephen Moss

Kingston B v Maidenhead A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 24 November 2025

The fixture schedule has given Kingston B a tough introduction to their first season with the big boys of the Thames Valley League first division. Having played Kingston A “home” and “away” in the first two matches, we next faced the league leaders, Maidenhead A. Admittedly, Maidenhead away do not seem to be the same daunting challenge as they are at home; they were missing some of their strongest players, most notably GM Matthew Wadsworth. Nevertheless, we expected a close match.

In fact, the only board on which we were outrated was the top one, as Bohdan Terler has a very impressive 2235 ECF grade. However, this was actually the first game to finish, with a convincing win for Peter Hasson (pictured above). After opening with the curiously named Slow Variation of the Sicilian Defence (2. Be2), White surprisingly allowed a knight fork which won the exchange. He didn’t get any real compensation for this and Peter efficiently pressed home his advantage.

On board 4 Alan Scrimgour, with White, and John Snead were contesting a c3 Sicilian Defence. Alan commented that “The game was mostly level, even slightly better for him early on,” but he felt that he later missed a couple of chances before the position resolved itself into one where it was hard for either player to make much progress.

This was definitely a night for the Sicilian Defence in all its varieties. Jasper Tambini chose to employ the Grand Prix Attack against Charles Bullock on board 2. He noted: “I think it’s interesting to show how the Grand Prix Attack, thought to be such an aggressive opening, can turn into positional play as well.” In the position below the game looks like a war of attrition, but it was at this point that Jasper gained a decisive advantage.

As the evening went on, all the games turned in Kingston’s favour. I had gained the bishop pair early on with Black against Nigel Smith on board 3 , but was only able to capitalise on this when the queens came off and, in a battle between passed pawns, my own, backed by the two bishops, proved the more dangerous.

Meanwhile, on board 6 Kingston newcomer Martyn Jones had achieved the sort of position a Vienna Gambit player dreams of:

So the score was 4.5-0.5 to Kingston B with only the board 5 game to finish. Here Homayoon Froogh, with Black against Nigel Dennis, had been the exchange down for some time, and his prospects looked bleak. Remarkably, as time trouble approached, he turned the tables, and his bishop and three pawns overcame his opponent’s rook and one pawn. This was the position in which White slipped up.

This was a fitting conclusion to a very dominant performance by Kingston B. The result gives us our first Thames Valley League division 1 points, and also, by taking points off Maidenhead, is helpful to the Kingston A team in their quest to win the league for the fourth successive year.

David Rowson is Kingston B captain in Thames Valley League division 1

Surbiton 1 v Kingston 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at Fircroft, Surbiton 19 November 2025

For this match I deputised as captain for Peter Andrews, who was busy moving house, though he did manage to come to the venue later to support his team. The thread of his WhatsApp commentary expressed well the twists and turns of the match, in which for a long time the final decisive result appeared improbable. Surbiton had a rating edge on five of the boards, and on the other two the ratings were close to parity.

The first game to finish was on board 3, where Alan Scrimgour (who had Black) and Joshua Pirgon agreed a draw, despite the fact that, as Alan Scrimgour said later, he was possibly slightly worse in the final position. After that the difficulties of my own game required all my concentration, so I wasn’t aware of the order of events.

I did, however, register that Stephen Moss was conducting a devastating kingside attack with Black against Graham Alcock on board 7. One thing that was original about this was that Stephen had opened with the Caro-Kann Defence and then castled queenside – commendably ambitious play. A key early moment came in this position.

In the board 1 game, Mark Josse began with the English Opening against Kingston’s Jasper Tambini (pictured above, right), and the two players castled on opposite sides. The presence of all four bishops on open diagonals made for a double-edged position.

The board 4 game between Stephen Lovell and Liam Bayly had also begun as an English Opening. White was able to put pressure on Black’s queenside pawns.

On board 5, Homayoon Froogh had Black against Neil Davies. It was an intense struggle, but after a long period of manoeuvring Homayoon got on top in a time scramble to record another good win. Meanwhile Jon Eckert, with White on board 6, was pressing Nick Faulks hard with a kingside attack. He showed principle in refusing to take a draw by perpetual check, but unfortunately a subsequent error resulted in him losing.

On board 2, having misplayed the middlegame and lost a pawn with White against David Scott, I tried to find tactical resources to avoid going straight into a lost endgame. In this position I was eventually successful.

So Kingston 2 defied the ratings to achieve a clear victory in a very well-contested match. We look forward to the return match against Surbiton 1 at home tomorrow.

David Rowson is Kingston second-team captain in the Thames Valley League and was acting captain in this Surrey League match

Guildford 1 v Kingston 1, Surrey League division 1 match played at the Guildford Institute on 17 November 2025

In Surrey League chess, as in most professional sport, the home side enjoys an advantage. In our case that is not because of crowd support or pressure on referees, but because it is easier to turn out the strongest possible team when there are no travel issues and when the match is on the night of one’s choosing. So away at Guildford – on paper our strongest rivals for the Division 1 title – was always likely to be a difficult and crucial match. And so it seemed when the teamsheets were exchanged, with Kingston having the rating advantage on boards 1-3, but Guildford having the edge on 4 to 8. For once I won the toss, giving Messrs Maycock and Lalić, at least, their preferred colours.

John Hawksworth was first to finish, with a solid draw against fellow IM Nigel Povah in which both players declined to push for more. But I let the side down in an error-strewn game against Clive Frostick. A brain fade in which I thought I might win two pieces for a rook with a zwischenzug but missed the most obvious reply left me with a compromised pawn structure. Trying to create chances, I sacrificed a pawn and succeeded in inducing Clive to blunder a piece. But he had some initiative for it, and in trying to unravel actively rather than acquiesce in a draw I carelessly allowed a mate which could only be avoided by giving up the queen.

David Maycock soon scored the equaliser on board 1 with White against Gwilym Price. Black had gradually got on top in this game, but David hit back resourcefully.

The remaining games were all heading for endgames and time trouble, with not much certainty about the outcomes (and given that the players mostly stopped recording under the five-minute rule, not much clarity about what actually happened).

On board 5, Peter Hasson won an ending against Mark Josse in which he was a piece up but Mark had two advanced passed pawns which had bypassed Peter’s king as it stormed up the board. Peter managed to combine his rook, knight, king and advanced d-pawn to produce mating threats to advance the pawn, sufficient to win before Mark queened his infantry.

On board 6, Jasper Tambini’s game with Matthew Dishman was level for a long time, but his attempt to attack by pushing kingside pawns left his own king decisively vulnerable in the major piece ending.

The board 3 game between IM Peter Large and Guildford FM Jon Ady was baffling to the occasional viewer. At one stage, Peter seemed to be on the back foot against a sacrificial attack, threatened both down open kingside files and potentially on the back row. But he devised a clever major piece defence along the third rank which addressed all the threats, and the next time I looked he was a rook up and the attack had burned out, so Kingston had taken the lead again.

On board 2, Peter Lalić had Black against the fast-rising junior Adam Sefton, who had recently defeated Peter’s mother when Guildford visited Epsom. So the win was not only crucial in the match but important in terms psychologists understand. Yet again, Peter’s endgame technique depriving the opponent of useful moves was decisive.

The last game to finish was John Foley’s with Black on board 8 against Adrian Wallace (pictured above). John’s cause looked hopeless when he went into an ending of rook and bishop v rook and knight three pawns down. He had some activity, and regained one of the pawns, but a rook ending two pawns down is still generally lost. However, one of the pawns was a rook’s pawn, which gives the weaker side some hope, as did the clock situation, with John’s opponent often down to a few seconds before moving. As John’s king was forced out from in front of the other pawn, the position below crystallised.

White was in his own words “unable to work it out given the time” and conceded the draw. Some of us were sceptical, but it seems that the position really is a draw.

• If white moves his king up the board to support queening, the black king stops him escaping to the opposite side of the pawn from the black rook, so he can’t use the pawn to block checks.
• If he hangs close to the pawn, eg 1. Ke6 Rh6+ 2. Ke7 Re7+, Black can keep checking.
• If he moves to the right towards the rook, then if the king gets to f7, Rh7+  forces it back to e8 or e6 else the pawn is lost, so he can’t get to the g-file to stop the checks.
• And if he goes to f6 intending Kg7, then after 1. Kf6 Rh6+  2. Kg7 Rd6 wins the pawn.
• If the white king goes backwards hoping to use his rook to stop the checks, then while he stays on the c-file (or further to the right) Black can keep checking, and as soon as he goes to the b-file Black will be able to move his R to the d-file behind the pawn, winning it, eg at some stage the black rook checks the white king on the fourth rank, 1. Kc3 Rh3+, 2 Kb4 Rd3.
• And once the d-pawn is lost, the ending with the black king in front of the a-pawn is dead drawn, whether or not the rooks stay on the board or are exchanged.

Thankfully that drama was only gilt on the gingerbread with the match win already secured, but it was another illustration of the importance of endgames, and the different sort of visualisation which may be needed there.

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

Kingston C v Richmond E, Thames Valley League division X match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 17 November 2025

This match was in the balance right until the end when Nette Robinson, with Black against Michael Larby on board 3, blundered in a winning position, making Richmond the winners by 2.5-1-5. Rob Taylor lost to the accomplished Abhay Patil on board 1, but there were positives for Kingston on the other two boards: a fine victory for Anqi Yang against Aditya Patil on board 3 and an encouraging draw for Robert Chmiest against Richmond captain Karl Stand on board 4. Thanks as ever to captain Jon Eckert for putting the Kingston team together and overseeing proceedings.

Stephen Moss

Epsom 5 v Kingston 3, Surrey League division 4 match played at Epsom Christian Fellowship on 17 November 2025

This match was played in freezing conditions at Epsom’s church venue. Note to Epsom – that is really not fair to players and you will need to address these concerns as the winter progresses. But the Kingston players managed to rise above the temperature and put in a strong performance, marshalled as ever by the indefatigable Ed Mospan, winning 4-2.

Kingston newcomer Xavier Cowan won an important victory with Black on board 1 against Epsom veteran Michael Wickham, and Adam Nakar shared the point on board 2 with the dangerous Sammy Hedges. Promising junior Ethan Bogerd, who also plays for Kingston, got the better of Seth Warren on board 3, but the wins that took Kingston over the line came on boards 4 and 5, where the experienced Ye Kyaw and David Shalom got the better of their opponents. Fred Marthoz, though outrated by more than 250 points, ensured a clear margin of victory with an excellent draw on board 6. A terrific victory, appreciated by Ed and his team once they had thawed out.

Stephen Moss