Kingston v Epsom, Lauder Trophy, Willoughby Arms, Kingston, on 10 October 2022

It was a bad night for Kingston, as the holders of the Lauder Trophy suffered the indignity of going out in this season’s preliminary stage, beaten 4.5-1.5 by a strong Epsom team. Kingston’s stellar run was brought crashing down. The last time Kingston lost a match was in November 2021 when Epsom 3 beat Kingston 2. So, Epsom has started and finished our unbeaten run.

The Lauder Trophy is a tournament in which the teams are restricted in the total rating of the players, and the main challenge to captains is to spreadsheet juggle their players to form a team which comes in under the limit. Epsom captain and prime mover Marcus Gosling has finally found the winning formula: international masters on the top boards and underrated juniors on the bottom boards.

Alas, Kingston were not able to counter this pattern and lost on the bottom three boards. David Rowson secured a draw on board 1 against IM Graeme Buckley, though did wonder later whether he should have played on given that the tide was running strongly against Kingston. The Buckley family were out in force for Epsom, with Graeme’s wife Susan Lalić defeating Julian Way on board 2. Their daughters Emma and Lucy obtained a point between them on boards 3 and 4, Emma gamely stepping in after 30 minutes to face Alan Scrimgour on board 3 when the scheduled player Epsom failed to turn up. Meanwhile, Susan’s son Peter Lalić was playing some thematic games in the garden, being too strong to fit into the Kingston line-up.

Being objective, the games were not of the highest quality. However, our board 6 Stephen Daines was impressed by his young opponent Maya Keen, who outplayed him in the endgame. Stephen hasn’t played a rated game in 40 years, but as a Willoughby pub regular he decided to join our chess club having seen how much everybody enjoys themselves. The pub landlord, who is very keen on his trophy cabinet being filled with silverware, looks forward to asking Stephen how he got on.

The photographs show that another match was also in progress alongside the crunch Lauder clash – Kingston B suffered a surprise defeat to an outgraded Surbiton C in division 2 of the Thames Valley League. It really wasn’t a great night for Kingston in terms of results, but the upside was the chess-related energy at the Willoughby. We had 24 players upstairs, together with parents and spectators. In the garden, where you can play in heated and well-lit beach huts, there were at least a dozen players. So in total there were nigh on 40 players at the club tonight. Who said chess was dead?

Kingston congratulates Epsom on a convincing victory and wishes them luck in the next round against Guildford.

John Foley

Alexander Cup first-round match played over 10 boards at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston, on Monday 3 October 2022

This was the first match of the new season for Kingston and a very important one – the first round of the Alexander Cup, Surrey’s premier knockout tournament, which Kingston won last season for the first time in 46 years. To have fallen at the first hurdle would have been a little embarrassing, but despite odd moments of doubt that never really looked likely on a night when a very strong Kingston team emerged as 8-2 winners. South Norwood fought hard, but in the end their lack of strength in depth told.

Top board saw a clash between Kingston’s David Maycock and South Norwood’s Marcus Osborne. Osborne had White and played an Open Catalan, but Maycock gained a slight edge out of the opening. He missed an opportunity to consolidate his advantage in the middle game, and the position resolved itself into a queen and rook endgame in which Maycock had an extra pawn. The players decided that, despite the pawn advantage, a draw was inevitable and repeated moves. Later computer analysis taking the game to more than 170 moves suggested they were right. That pawn was never going to break free.

On board 2, the ever dependable Peter Lalić, with White, had a surprisingly straightforward victory over Tariq Oozerally, who was in effect lost after move 16 when his queen was trapped after an overambitious foray into enemy territory. Michael Healey had a much tougher time of it on board 3 against Owen Phillips, and admitted he was fortunate to escape with a draw. Phillips had two connected pawns running and looked certain to break through, but Healey kept fighting, time became a factor, Phillips went wrong and the pawns never quite made it to the eighth. A let-off for Kingston.

South Norwood were hugely outrated on the lower boards, and Peter Andrews and Alan Scrimgour proved too experienced for their opponents, giving Kingston an early 2-0 lead. The ever resilient Ken Chamberlain made Julian Way work harder for his win, and took the game to a rook and bishop v rook and knight endgame. But Way, as he usually does in endgames, found a way, his knight proving too mobile for Chamberlain’s blocked bishop. The “bad bishop”: is it my imagination or does that determine the outcome of about 50% of all chess games?

On board 5, Will Taylor played a nicely controlled Petrov’s Defence to manoeuvre a positional edge over veteran Roy Reddin before trapping Reddin’s bishop and prompting immediate resignation, while David Rowson, with White on board 6, saw off another South Norwood stalwart, Ron Harris, in a closed Sicilian. Harris, who loves to attack, accidentally mislaid a knight, but it turned out to be an interesting positional sacrifice, not sound but sufficient to conjure up an attack which got him back to near-equality. The canny Rowson was, though, unflustered in defence, his rook outgunned Harris’s bishop in the endgame, and White mopped up Black’s doubled pawns to make resignation inevitable.

That left two terrific attacking games – one of which went in Kingston’s favour while the other didn’t. Vladimir Li, playing White, had a tactically sharp encounter with Mohammad Sameer-Had which, once the dust had cleared, resolved itself into an endgame in which Li had knight against bishop plus an extra pawn. With all the pawns on both sides disconnected, Li used his knight – it was a night for mobile knights – to force Black’s bishop offside to allow the White king to capture the crucial c-pawn and open the path for a passed pawn.

In the other game, the only game which Kingston lost, our president John Foley was downed by South Norwood captain Simon Lea. The game hinged on the thematic breakthrough d5 against the Slav.

White has just played 19. d5. This move is the culmination of White’s strategy and if it works (which in this case it did) White has an open game with free-flowing bishops and a clear advantage. However, Black had correctly prepared for this move and had 19…Nc5! up his sleeve. The game could have proceeded 20. d6 Bg5 21. Bxg5 Qxg5 22.Re3 Nxb3 (taking out the strong bishop) 23. Qxb3 Nd3 24. Rf1 Nf4 and Black has tricky counterplay.

The reason Black hesitated is that he was concerned about the advanced d-pawn. In practice, it would not be able to survive being so far from support. Black decided to exchange pawns first, which precluded the knight from reaching c5. The resulting open position played into White’s hands, and Lea conducted the final stage con brio.

24. Bd6 is winning. Afterwards, John surmised that often it is better to continue with one’s plan and rely upon favourable tactics rather than be diverted by fear that the opponent may have obtained a benefit – in this case an advanced pawn. A strategic hesitation and the game was lost.

Happily for Kingston, the assassination of the president did not presage collapse. The lesser citizens were doing enough to carry the day, and Kingston were through to a semi-final against Wallington or Streatham. The dream of back-to-back Alexander cups is still on.

Stephen Moss

Friendly match between Kingston and Richmond over 16 boards, played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on Monday 5 September 2022

It is too early to call these 16-board pre-season matches a tradition, but after the success of the encounter with neighbours Surbiton last year the Kingston club decided to repeat the exercise and issued a challenge to our neighbours on the other side of the Thames, Richmond, who have been going great guns at the Adelaide pub, their new venue in Teddington, and now boast more than 70 members.

They accepted the challenge and put together a team at relatively short notice to take on a Kingston team selected and captained by Julian Way. Kingston club chair Alan Scrimgour welcomed Richmond, and Richmond president Richard James informed him that this was the 75th anniversary of a previous “big match” involving earlier incarnations of the two clubs, played on 17 June 1947 over 36 (!) boards (result unknown).

On this occasion both sides were fairly experimental, with the opportunity taken to blood new members, but Kingston were unquestionably stronger on paper. Richmond were without stars such as Gavin Wall, Mike Healey and Bertie Barlow, whereas the Kingston team was headed by several first-team regulars. Richmond were outgraded on every board and Kingston ran out reasonably comfortable winners, but it was by no means a walkover and Richmond fought hard despite some large rating differences. A notable feature of the match was that there were no draws – in a friendly, players perhaps play with more freedom than in a league match where every half-point counts.

Richmond made the early running, with two of their ungraded players winning on the lower boards against two of our newbies, Hayden Holden and Stephen Daines, while Kingston’s youngest player, the immensely promising and committed Jaden Mistry, provided an assured win. That early 2-1 lead was, however, as good as it got for Richmond, with Kingston winning the next five games.

Kingston president John Foley mopped up after his opponent lost a couple of pieces; Vladimir Li roared home in just 18 moves after sacrificing his rook on h1 for a forced mate; Emma Buckley won convincingly in 33 moves after an unusual response to the Caro-Kann – 2. Qf3; Jon Eckert forced resignation after 25 moves, threatening an unstoppable mate after a quiet Exchange French opening; and David Rowson had to work hard against his talented young opponent, giving up two knights for a rook and pawn to gain an initiative which eventually produced an overwhelming attack.

Richmond struck back with a win on board 7 against our late replacement, Jacky Chan, to make the score 6-3 for Kingston. Thereafter, wins alternated between the clubs (victories for Kingston debutants Charlie Cooke and Silverio Abasolo, losses for Max Selemir and Gregor Smith) before the score reached a decisive 9-5 for Kingston, with the winning point being scored by David Shalom on board 11.

That left only two games in play, Maxim Dunn for Richmond resisting strongly against Kingston’s much higher-rated David Maycock on board one and Kingston’s Ljubica Lazarevic in a bishop and pawn endgame against Michael Robinson-Chui. On board one an interesting position arose (see photograph below), with queens on a1 and a8 linking up with bishops. From a vantage point above the board a knight sacrifice on g7 looked inevitable, and so it proved.

The final game to finish was board 10, where, after mistakes on both sides, Lju Lazarevic prevailed. The result, 11-5 for Kingston, was a good one for the outrated Richmond team, but, in any event, it proved an excellent season opener for both clubs. For Kingston, fine wins by a clutch of new players gave cause for optimism ahead of a challenging season in which the club will field six league teams and three cup teams, and play more than 50 fixtures – a huge challenge given that the club’s membership remains smaller than that of some of its rivals.

Matching last season’s extraordinary performance in winning five trophies will be well-nigh impossible, but we have high hopes in the top divisions of the Surrey and Thames Valley leagues, to which we were promoted last year, and a successful defence of the Alexander Cup would be a tremendous achievement. The preliminaries are over. Now for the real thing.

Alan Scrimgour and Stephen Moss

Alexander Cup final between Kingston and Wimbledon, played at the Adelaide, Teddington, on 16 June 2022

This match meant so much to Kingston. The club had not won the Alexander Cup, Surrey’s premier knockout competition, since 1976 – 46 long, often frustrating years. We had come through the earlier rounds at a canter and were now up against Wimbledon in a match played at the neutral venue of the Adelaide pub in Teddington, home of Richmond and Twickenham Chess Club, to whom thanks are once again due for hosting the final.

Before the start of the match, Wimbledon’s Russell Granat paid tribute to his long-time team-mate Nick Keene, whose death had been announced on the very day of the match. Keene was a strong player who had been associated with Wimbledon for many years. His playing style was highly original – early cramped positions suddenly bursting into life, as Granat explained – and he was noted for his sporting and gentlemanly approach to the game. The players stood and observed a minute’s silence in Keene’s honour.

Wimbledon had brought a strong team to the final, spearheaded by IM Alberto Suarez Real on board 1. So strong, in fact, that John Foley, who had intended to be non-playing captain, decided at the eleventh hour to play himself, exchanging roles with Jon Eckert, who, freed from playing responsibilities, captained Kingston on the night. Eckert also won an important toss, giving Kingston’s board 1, Mike Healey, White against Wimbledon’s IM.

We had hopes of picking up points on the lower boards, where we outrated Wimbledon, but as so often those hopes were to be confounded. Indeed, we were quickly in trouble on board 8, where Ivan Georgiev was struggling against rising star Shahvez Ali. A recent win against Coulsdon’s Chino Atako tells you just how good young Ali is, and his official Surrey rating of 1773 (set back in August 2021) gives no clue as to his true strength. His live ECF rating is 1988 and he is clearly a 2200-plus player in the making.

Ali played a mainline closed Catalan and, by advancing his b and c pawns, exerted early pressure. Georgiev went wrong, was forced to give up a piece for a pawn, and by move 23 was effectively busted. He bravely fought on, blitzing out another 40 moves, but the game was up, and Wimbledon had first blood. Captain Eckert and the Kingston contingent who had come along to support were aghast.

Things were not going according to plan. Foley was doing well on board 7 and so was Alan Scrimgour on board 9, until he missed a combination that would have netted two pieces for a rook. But Vladimir Li, whom we had considered our banker on board 4, was in trouble in the opening, most of the other games were level and the rarefied proceedings on board 1 were largely impenetrable.

Still, accentuate the positive. Foley, who this week was elected president of Kingston Chess Club, opted for the mildewed London System and played a beautifully controlled game, picking up a couple of pawns before polishing off his opponent with what we can only call a “cheapo” that either won a piece or forced mate. His opponent, Oliver Weiss, decided to fall on his sword: 1-1 and match on.

On board 10, once Scrimgour had missed (or, as it later transpired, deliberately chosen not to play) his early tactical shot, the game had turned somewhat and, if anything, it was Wimbledon’s Sean Ingle who held a small edge as the game moved towards the endgame. Ingle, though, who was outrated by a fair margin, sought peace, and Scrimgour, with an expert assessment of how the game stood, concurred. All square at 1.5 to 1.5.

The match was in the balance and Kingston backers were still far from happy. Vladimir Li was in what looked like terminal trouble, Wimbledon’s Suarez Real was turning the screw on board 1, and the other games were too close to call. Where were Kingston’s points going to come from? Board 3 possibly, where Peter Lalić was playing a tricky anti-Dutch system against the experienced Dan Rosen. Eckert, himself a keen Dutch player, reckoned Rosen was playing a Dutch that had gone wrong. A “double Dutch”, one wag suggested.

On board 6, Julian Way’s game against Haridas Girinath was very tight. Girinath played a solid Modern Defence, and a draw was agreed after 24 moves, but Way – distracted by his opponent’s draw offer – missed a neat tactic in the final position that would have given him an advantage of +3 (the exchange and a pawn). One that got away for Kingston, and, with the scores tied at 2-2, it still felt as if Wimbledon had a slight edge in the remaining games.

We were in the middle of a spate of draws. Peter Andrews, playing his trusty English against Wimbledon veteran Paul Barasi (not a man to sit in his seat if he can be having a cigarette outside the pub), had had the worst of the opening exchanges and overlooked a tactic that allowed Barasi to grab a pawn. He said later that the oversight affected his confidence and, despite outrating Barasi, was happy to take a draw with the position level. Kingston’s ratings advantage on the bottom boards had not yielded the hoped-for dividends, and now we had to look at the top boards, where fierce battles were raging.

In many ways, or so it seemed in retrospect, the crucial game was board 4, where Kingston’s Vladimir Li had been struggling from the start against another Wimbledon veteran, Ian Heppell. Heppell played the Alapin variation against Li’s Sicilian, and enjoyed a tiny edge in the opening which quickly built into something more substantial in the middle game.

That resolved into an endgame where Heppell had knight and six pawns against Li’s bishop and five pawns. Some observers thought Li was a goner, but Ljubica Lazarevic, who was tweeting and what’s apping the match for Kingston, reckoned the long-range capabilities of Li’s bishop gave him a fighting chance, and Heppell clearly agreed. With a time scramble beckoning, he bailed out, and a draw was agreed. The engine suggests Heppell was almost +2 in the final position.

With that unexpected draw, Kingston started to believe, especially as the four players left to get us over the line – Mike Healey, David Maycock, Peter Lalić and Will Taylor – all had youth on their side. Draws are on the whole not in their vocabulary – they would be pushing for wins. At least that was what the exhausted and sweltering Kingston contingent in the bar hoped.

The first crack in the Wimbledon dam came on board 3, where Peter Lalić – a towering presence in Kingston’s first team all season – was up against Dan Rosen. Lalić established an early advantage; Rosen fought back to equality; Lalić, playing beautifully (as so often) with the bishop pair, re-established his advantage and had what looked like a decisive pawn on the a-file, with Rosen’s remaining rook and black-squared bishop (pitted against Lalić’s rook and white-squared bishop) tied down. Rosen resigned.

But, as a post mortem in the bar quickly revealed, the resignation was premature. The engine, despite the fact that Rosen was in a near-zugzwang, only gives Lalić plus 0.5 in the final position. Psychology may have been the key. Lalić has a reputation as a ferocious blitz player, and Rosen is in effect saying “In a time scramble, I know you will win this.” Lalić’s win made it 4-3 to Kingston, and suddenly the door was open – though whether dams have doors is a moot point. The heat was getting to the match reporters as well as the players.

The news got even better a few minutes later when David Maycock, playing Black, won a magnificent game against Russell Granat, a highly rated and very attacking player who has been a mainstay of a succession of strong Wimbledon sides for decades. Granat had played the very sharp Worrall attack in the Ruy Lopez, which Maycock had first neutralised and then, with a flamboyant set of pawn pushes, repelled.

Granat’s pawns became uncoordinated, Maycock consolidated his advantage with some lovely tactics, and on move 48, faced with a phalanx of unstoppable pawns, Granat resigned. Maycock and Lalić have been galvanising figures for Kingston all season and here they were again, delivering against very strong and experienced players when it really counted.

On the subject of counting, that was exactly what the Kingstonians were now trying to do. With the score at 5-3 in our favour, would we win on board count even if the final two games went against us? Happily, the maths were not tested, because Kingston soon recorded their third victory in the space of 10 minutes when the rock-solid Will Taylor, playing Black on board 6, defeated Anthony Hughes – another triumph of youth over experience.

Hughes had played the Botvinnik System of the English, with an early e4; Taylor easily equalised and then traded pieces to leave himself in a middle game where a better pawn structure gave him an edge. It was still defensible with best play, but time pressure, the occasion and the heat were starting to take their toll, and Wimbledon’s Hughes blundered horribly, dropping a rook for nothing.

The game, the match and the Alexander Cup were, in an instant, all gone. Or as Lazarevic put it on the club What’s App: “Will wins on board 6! Kingston have done it! Winners of the Alexander Cup!” We do not stint on exclamation marks on these historic occasions. And, as we discovered, where there’s a way there’s a Will.

The match was won, but on board 1 Mike Healey and Alberto Suarez Real were still locked in an epic struggle. Healey, ever inventive, had responded to Suarez Real’s Sicilian with the so-called Chameleon variation (1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.Nge2 Nf6 4.g3 g6 5.Bg2 Bg7 6.d3 d6 7.O-O O-O). Suarez Real won the exchange, and Healey’s love of knights looked unlikely to save him. But even IMs make mistakes, and Suaraz went wrong in time trouble, handed the exchange back to get rid of a troublesome knight on e7 supported by a pawn that had been planted on f6 all game, and stumbled into a theoretical draw.

That made it 6.5 to 3.5 to Kingston and the celebrations in the bar could start in earnest. Even the abstemious David Maycock had a half of bitter. Let’s hope this is not the start of a slippery slope to perdition for the immensely talented 18-year-old. We need him firing on all cylinders next season, along with the rest of this terrific team if we are to have any chance of retaining this much-vaunted trophy.

This was Kingston’s first win in the Alexander Cup for 46 years, and the club’s fifth victory in the competition overall in its 100-year history. We won it previously in 1932, 1946, 1975 and 1976. In 1932, Kingston did the “double”, winning the Alexander Cup and the Surrey Trophy (division 1 of the Surrey League). This is the only time so far that Kingston have managed that.

Remember that this season we won Surrey’s premier knockout trophy as a second-division club – we had already wrapped up the second-division title. John Saunders, who was at the final taking the terrific photographs which adorn this report, likened it to Sunderland beating Leeds in the 1973 FA cup final, a second-division club downing a strong first-division side. Kingston, who a few years ago were going nowhere, had suddenly emerged to claim the crown.

Now what? Do we have the spirit and the strength in depth to compete for the title in division one next season? Could we even hope to repeat that achievement of 1932 and do the double again, with all the effort, stress and pain that will require? Even in triumph, you feel a certain sense of anti-climax, a sense of “Is that it; is that all there is?” And there is a nagging fear that maybe the only way now is down. This season Kingston were the insurgents; next year we are the targets.

Kingston have been very strong twice in our history: in the 1930s and the 1970s. We may now be entering a third golden age. But success comes with a warning. Mitcham dominated Surrey chess in the 1980s and 90s; Redhill in the first 15 years of this century. Both those clubs no longer field teams in the Surrey League. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Saunders was a member of the Mitcham team which won eight Alexander Cups in 10 years. A fantastic achievement. They must have been utterly knackered. So knackered, in fact, that within a few years the key organisers had left and the club was on the way out. Becoming so dominant, winning eight Alexander cups in so short a space of time, is a great aspiration. But the fate of once-mighty Mitcham is also a memento mori. Roman generals returning in victory supposedly had slaves whispering in their ear “Remember you must die.” For the moment we will celebrate, but we will not forget how fragile success is. We have had the luckiest and most memorable of seasons. Next year we will discover if that success is etched into granite or founded on sand.

Jon Eckert and Stephen Moss

Lauder Trophy final between Kingston and Chessington, played at the Adelaide, Teddington, on 14 June 2022

This match was always a potential banana skin for Kingston. Chessington are an ambitious new club which has done very well in its first season – beating the Lauder Trophy holders South Norwood in the semi-final of the competition was surely the shock of the season. Their pool of players is small and we outrated them substantially, but that made it something of a no-win situation for Kingston. When David meets Goliath, who wants to be the big guy?

The two teams were meeting at the neutral venue of the Adelaide pub in Teddington, home of Richmond and Twickenham Chess Club. Many thanks to Richmond for hosting, and to Huw Williams for setting up and overseeing a match played in a great spirit. Thanks, too, to John Saunders for taking the photographs that accompany this report, and for collating game scores.

The match started in the worst possible way for Kingston. Jake Grubb was up against the talented junior Harvey Li on board 6 and was quickly drawn into a tactical melee which saw him go the exchange down. Worse was to follow as the eight-year-old Li played a neat combination that gave Grubb the unenviable choice of losing queen for rook and knight or being mated. Grubb took the third option – resignation. Well played Harvey Li, clearly a name to look out for. First blood to Chessington.

Black to play and win (solution at the end)

The special feature of the Lauder Trophy is that the collective ratings of the six players cannot exceed 10,500 ECF points (an average rating of 1750 across the team), so you have to strike a balance between strong players and relative novices. It’s always fascinating to see how captains slice the cake. A junior such as Li is perfect for the Lauder because he gets into the team with a rating of 1350, but his true strength as a fast-improving player will be several hundred points above that.

By contrast, on board 1 were two vastly experienced players, Kingston’s David Rowson and Chessington’s James McCarthy. Their 2000 rating strength has been tested over decades, they knew each other’s games inside out, and unsurprisingly perhaps they played a short and cagey draw that ended with a repetition of moves. On the surface, a decent result for Kingston, as David had been Black, but one that still left the team in deficit, at a time when two of the remaining games were even and Kingston’s board 3, Vladimirs Bovtramovics, had a very passive position and looked like he was being squeezed. Frankly, as Kingston’s Lauder captain I was worried, though not as worried as England football manager Gareth Southgate, whose team had just gone 4-0 down at home to Hungary in a match that was being avidly followed by the regulars in the bar downstairs who seemed oblivious to the drama unfolding in the chess room upstairs.

Gradually, things started to improve – at Teddington, that is, not Wembley. On board 5, Kingston’s Yae Chan Yang – a key figure and banker winner in the Lauder team throughout the season – had been on top all game, and his opponent succumbed to a crushing attack that ended in checkmate. Now it was 1.5 to 1.5, with boards 2 and 4 level and Vladimirs fighting for equality on board 3. Thoughts of what would happen in the event of a 3-3 draw – board count and, if it was still drawn, bottom-board eliminator – started to enter my head.

Looking at the board 3 game afterwards, Chessington’s Kevin Martin’s apparent advantage was largely visual. His rooks dominated the e-file and his queen was lurking menacingly, while Vladimirs’ heavy artillery was entirely committed to defence and he was forced into some ugly manoeuvres with his knight. But the engine suggests he was never worse than 0.5, and after Martin, in his frustration to make his space advantage tell, had lashed out with g4 the position quickly became level. By the time they agreed a draw on move 48, with queens and rooks exchanged to leave knight v knight and an equal number of immobile pawns on each side, it was dead drawn.

Kingston’s fate was now in the experienced hands of Scottish international Alan Scrimgour on board 2 and Jon Eckert, who had been lauded at the club’s AGM the previous evening for a season in which he had scored 14.5/18 for Kingston, on board 4. They did not let us down.

Scrimgour, with the bishop pair, had a small edge for most of his game, but his opponent, Visagan Ravindran, had turned the tables by move 34 and looked like he could go into an endgame a pawn up. Scrimgour perhaps realised the tide had turned more quickly than his opponent, and cannily offered a draw, which the heavily outrated Ravindran accepted after a minute’s consideration.

That left Jon Eckert’s game on board 4 against Murugan Kanagasapay. The ever enterprising Eckert had played the Vienna Gambit and managed to get a small edge in the opening. But Kanagasapay fought back to equality, with both having queen, rook and potentially dangerous advanced pawns. The big difference was time: Eckert had 10 minutes left, while Kanagasapay was virtually playing on the increment. Kanagasapay blundered away a rook, and Eckert pressed home his advantage and forced checkmate.

Kingston had won the match 3.5 to 2.5 to regain the trophy they won in 2018/19 and then lost in the final to South Norwood the following season. That latter final was actually played in the autumn of 2021 after an 18-month Covid delay, which might make a nice quiz question: which was the season in which Kingston managed to both lose and win the Lauder Trophy? Answer: 2021/22.

Kanagasapay (who, in another ironic twist, had played for Kingston in that previous Lauder final) looked devastated by his loss in the decisive game. He co-founded the Chessington club with his sister (and captain on the night) Meena Santhosh, and knew how much this meant in its debut year. But the enterprising Chessington club, which has a booming junior section, will be back and are well on the way to being a force in Surrey chess.

The end of the game produced a round of applause, and Eckert calmly took the plaudits from his delighted team-mates. Had it been me, I would have insisted on a lap of honour along Park Road, which runs alongside the Adelaide, but Eckert was the very model of modesty. On the hottest evening of the year so far, his cool under extreme pressure was admirable.

Stephen Moss, Kingston Lauder Trophy captain

Grubb v Li, Teddington, 14 June 2022 1… Nde2+! wins the queen. If 2. RxN then Qb1#. In the game, Li played the intermezzo 1…Rxd4 2. cxd4 with the same continuation as above 2…Nde2++

Epsom’s failure to secure a draw in their final match against South Norwood mean they fall at the final hurdle, allowing Adam Nakar’s team to snatch promotion

In a way, this was the sweetest triumph of all in a season in which there have been plenty. Kingston’s second team had started off the season using the Centenary Trophy (division 4 of the Surrey League) as a testing ground for the new players who had joined in the wake of the pandemic – people who had got the chess bug online and now wanted to play some over-the-board chess. It was only halfway through the season when we suddenly realised “We can win this”.

In the end, we were a little lucky. Excellent wins away to South Norwood and Richmond put the team captained by Adam Nakar in the hunt, but we needed other results to go our way. In particular, we needed long-time league leaders Epsom 3 to stumble away to South Norwood 2. That trip was always going to be a tricky proposition for Epsom, but they only needed a draw to seal the division and seemed confident of getting it.

The match stood 3-2 to South Norwood on the night, but the game between South Norwood’s Ken Chamberlain and Epsom’s David Flewellen was adjourned, with the higher-rated Flewellen pressing for the win which would level the match at 3-3 and give Epsom the trophy. When they resumed a few weeks later, Flewellen carried on pressing, but Chamberlain is noted for his doughty defence and the issue was still undecided when they adjourned again. Because it was so late in the season, no third session was permitted under league rules, thwarting Epsom’s bid and handing the trophy to Kingston.

Flewellen sent the Kingston captain a note offering hearty congratulations, which was an extremely generous and sporting gesture in the circumstances. At every stage this season, Kingston and Epsom have been locked together in tough tussles, and it speaks volumes that the camaraderie between the two rival clubs has remained intact.

Kingston, Epsom and South Norwood all finished on 3.5 match points, and even the game points were tight, with Kingston 2 winning the division by a mere half-point from Epsom, with South Norwood close behind in third. A wonderful and unexpected end to the league season. Congratulations to Adam and his team.

Stephen Moss

Thames Valley League division 2 match played at Actonians Sports Club, London W5 on 23 May 2022

There was a suspiciously seasoned look to the Ealing Juniors team we faced when we arrived at their sports ground venue near Acton Town. The fact that several of the Ealing team had beards rather gave the game away: they were struggling, as they have all season, to get out a B team filled with bona fide juniors and were filling in with older Ealing club members.

One junior did show up, however, played on top board and enjoyed a very good night. Xavier Cowan beat the redoubtable David Rowson, to suggest that his 1925 rating underestimates his true strength by some considerable distance. Cowan, opening as he usually does with d4, played a well-controlled positional game before it exploded into a riot of tactics which he navigated his way through with great skill despite being under time pressure.

On board 2, Jon Eckert built up one of the powerful attacks in which he specialises, and went on to convert smoothly. Ljubica Lazaravic won a complicated game on board 5, and I managed to eke out a win on board 6, despite being under severe pressure in the early stages after my attempted King’s Gambit had gone horribly wrong. If my opponent had had more faith in his attacking powers and hadn’t gone into his shell, I would have been in serious trouble, but his passivity allowed me first to undo the damage and then to launch a kingside attack of my own that forced mate.

These were the decisive results in the match – 3-1 to Kingston. The games on boards 3 and 4 were drawn, but in rather different manners. Gregor Smith’s solid draw on board 4 was fairly conventional and peace was declared early, but John Shanley’s draw on board 3 was anything but conventional. In an incident that only came to light while they were playing the endgame, it transpired that Shanley’s opponent, Andrew Glass, had at some point managed to take his own piece – a bishop that somehow got removed from the board while he was making a capture.

Once the error had been spotted, the game had moved on so far that the players were deep into a time scramble and had stopped recording their moves. It proved impossible to track back, so a draw was agreed. The match result was, in any case, not materially affected, as Kingston had already secured their victory. This strange draw made the final score 4-2, bringing our league season to a memorable (if unusual) conclusion.

Victory in the match meant we remained undefeated as a club in 18 matches during this calendar year, though it is surely tempting fate to mention this just ahead of our all-important Alexander Cup semi-final against CCF on 30 May. It also confirmed that we had topped the second division of the Thames Valley league with nine wins out 10 – our sole defeat was in the first match of the season when we found the long journey to Maidenhead a little too testing. The most striking statistic was that we had a positive board count – chess’s equivalent of goal difference – of plus 34, conceding only 13 game points out of 60.

It is fair to assume that next season, when we will be up against battle-hardened first-division teams, will be a good deal tougher. But for the moment let’s gaze on this season’s final table and enjoy having – after a few early worries when Richmond set a hot pace – won the league by a distance. Many thanks to our rivals for making it an enjoyable season and less of a walk in the park than it might look. The one-sided scores belied some hard fights, and we were extremely fortunate to beat Surbiton B in our second match. Thanks, too, to all the Kingston players who turned out and made the captain’s job so enjoyable and stress-free. Well, relatively stress-free anyway.

Stephen Moss, Kingston Thames Valley captain

A walkover adds a touch of bathos to Kingston’s rise to division 1, but we’re not complaining. We’re just happy to get there and are ready for the challenges ahead

It was not the way we would have wanted to claim a place in the first division of the Thames Valley League – an email from the captain of Ealing Juniors’ B team announcing they were unable to raise a team for a match due two days hence – but we’ll take it all the same. Ealing Juniors’ default gives Kingston an automatic 6-0 victory, and that is enough to confirm us as champions of Thames Valley division 2.

Ealing Juniors B are bottom of the division and, on paper, this was going to be a mismatch, so the default may have been for the best. No matter how quickly their standard of play is improving, there is little point in juniors coming up against players rated 700 points or more higher than them. Next season we will face Ealing Juniors A in division 1, and with their battery of 2000-plus players that will be a very different proposition.

Kingston have secured promotion with two games in hand – a terrific achievement and testament to how much stronger we have become this season. Thanks to everyone who played and contributed – as setter-uppers, packer-awayers, spectators, supporters, friends, allies. The team has been very easy to manage and the spirit at the club has been tremendous this season, which bodes well for the tougher challenges ahead next year in division 1, where strong outfits such as Hammersmith, Richmond and Ealing, as well as those pesky 2200-rated juniors, await us. Thanks also to Rick and his team at the Willoughby Arms, our home venue, for putting up with us.

Stephen Moss, Kingston Thames Valley captain (thankfully non-playing, except in dire emergencies)