CSC/Kingston 1 lose their opening matches on the first weekend of the 4NCL season, but the second and third teams both get off the mark
We knew it was going to be tough on our first weekend in division 1 of the 4NCL – the UK’s national chess league – and so it proved. Played 2, lost 2, though on Sunday against Blackthorne we came within a whisker not just of drawing the match but even winning it. Lessons learned, positives taken, we will come back stronger in January!
On Saturday we were up against the massed GMs of Manx Liberty and a loss by 6.5-15 was about as good as we could expect on rating. The high spot was a draw for 14-year-old Zain Patel (pictured above) against Hungarian grandmaster Miklos Galyas, though 10-year-old Supratit Banerjee almost went one better than that. He had a winning position against Polish GM Lukasz Cyborowski and even turned down a draw to press for the win, but then blundered in the position below.
The match on Sunday against Blackthorn was much closer: seven games were drawn – though Zain, who again played extremely well, and David Maycock had excellent winning chances – and the only win was by FM Dave Ledger against Supratit, a skilfully played positional game by Ledger from which Supratit will again have learned a great deal. We have a young team and hope that this experience of playing against the best in division 1 stands them in good stead for their future chess careers. Though that does not mean we have given up hope of surviving in Div 1. We will come out fighting at Peterborough in January.
These division 1 matches were played on the weekend of 23/34 November in Daventry. CSC/Kingston 2 and 3 had made their seasonal reappearance two weeks earlier in Peterborough, both winning on the Saturday and losing on the Sunday. The personal high spots were Peter Finn’s two wins from two games in Div 3, debutant Sanjit Kumar’s draw against the very strong Sussex Martlets player Russell Granat (also in Div 3), and a truly tremendous weekend for Petr Vachtfeidl, who beat Adam Cranston to secure the match win for the third team against Celtic Tigers on Saturday and then drew with the 2213-rated Ethan Norris in Sunday’s match in Div 4. A wonderful effort by Petr, who is a talisman for the CSC/Kingston team.
Thanks to all the players who took part in both weekends – these matches involve long treks to motorway hotels in the Midlands and east of England – and to Kate and Charlie Cooke for organising the teams with their usual calm efficiency. Now for 2025 and weekend 2! You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Wimbledon 1 v Kingston 2, Surrey League division 2 match played at St Winefride’s Church Hall, Wimbledon on 21 November 2024
If we had been offered a 4-3 loss at the start of this match, we would have thought that perfectly acceptable. Wimbledon are a first-division team who find themselves stuck (almost certainly only for this season) in division 2 of the Surrey League. We were heavily outrated, yet came tantalisingly close to at least drawing the match. With a fair wind, we might even have won it. So in the end a 4-3 defeat actually came as a disappointment.
Ye Kyaw, in his debut season for Kingston, had a tremendous draw on board 6, where he was outrated by 270 points by Owen Phillips. Charlie Cooke also had a good draw against Anik Fonseka on board 7. Alan Scrimgour and Ian Heppell reached an early draw on board 4, and Kingston president John Foley also made a draw on board 3 with White against promising Wimbledon junior Shahvez Ali, though when he analysed the game later he realised he had had a winning opportunity, as he explains in the annotation below.
So 2-2, with three games in progress. Luca Buanne (pictured above) was better against Peter Lalić, our first-division bulwark moonlighting for Wimbledon in Div 2, on board 1; Will Taylor a little worse against Russell Picot on board 2; Jon Eckert certainly no worse and possibly with a slight edge against Neil Cannon on board 5. Against all the odds, we really thought we were going to get away with this.
Luca played superbly and converted the better position he had out of the opening in excellent style, thwarting all Peter’s trickery.
Luca’s victory was countered by Russell Picot’s win with White for Wimbledon on board 2 against Will Taylor. Will had the better of the opening against Russell’s Catalan and established a small plus, but Russell equalised and then pounced on a tiny slip by Will to win a pawn. That was enough. Russell made the pawn count in an endgame with bishops of the same colour.
That left the score at 3-3, with Jon Eckert seemingly having good chances to draw the match by holding on board 5, but he was in time trouble and went wrong in the position below.
Kingston C v Richmond E, Thames Valley League division X match played at the Adelaide, Teddington on 19 November 2024
This was a terrific night for captain Jon Eckert’s Kingston C team. Jaden Mistry fell into an early trap and lost to Richmond veteran Barry Sutton on board 2, but Sean Tay smoothly converted his advantage with White on board 1, Rob Taylor had a much-needed win (after a runs of losses) on board 3 and junior Zhixing Bai, on his Kingston league debut, drew by threefold repetition with Richmond captain Karl Stand to complete an encouraging 2.5-1.5 win for Kingston.
Kingston B v Ealing B, Thames Valley League division 2 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 18 November 2024
This was one of those matches which felt closer than the scoreline suggests. Jon Eckert drew on board 4 without any alarms, but Jameel Jameel let slip a very promising position on board 6 and went down to defeat as both kings came under threat from queens and rooks. Alan Scrimgour was well placed on board 2, but the other three games looked less clear-cut. We had a rating advantage of 100 points a board, so should have felt confident, but there are statistics and there is chess.
Alan castled queenside and went for the jugular with a kingside attack while his opponent tried to mount his own offensive operation against the White king. Alan’s assault was faster and he brought matters to a swift conclusion with a nicely judged combination. “White gained space on the kingside against Black’s Philidor Defence by advancing his g-pawn,” Alan said later. “A couple of minor errors allowed White to create threats on the light squares, with the game ending suddenly after a bishop sacrifice on g6.”
John Bussmann felt he always had an edge on board 3, but nerves were not calmed by a clock malfunction which led to a delay and a resetting of the times. But he did in the end prevail. John’s return to chess action is important to the club, as we have surprisingly few players in the 1850-1900 ECF bracket. Alicia Mason, who has had a good start to her Kingston career, will soon be in that bracket at her current rate of progress. Here she squeezed out a win with Black from a level knight v knight endgame position.
Top board was a match-up between Kingston veteran Peter Andrews and Ealing B’s immensely likeable young captain Xavier Cowan (both pictured in action above at a relatively calm early stage of their battle). It was a thrilling game, here annotated by Peter – at least to the point where both players were in a time scramble.
An excellent victory for Peter over a talented young player. The wins by Peter, John and Alicia came in the last half hour of the match to complete a 4.5-1.5 victory which had not looked on the cards earlier – a victory, moreover, which leaves us flying high in division 2 of the Thames Valley League. For the moment at least.
Stephen Moss, Kingston club captain
The duelling ukuleles: John Saunders and David Maycock, who was celebrating his 21st birthday, duetin the bar
Kingston 3 v Epsom 4, Surrey League division 4 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 18 November 2024
Epsom showed their strength in depth by bringing a very strong fourth team to Kingston, and proved more than a match for Kingston 3. Greg Heath got a solid draw against the higher-rated Robert Fairhall on board 4, and captain Ed Mospan showed how it is done with a cool victory over Oliver Kuzmanoski on board 3, but the other four players went down to defeat against opponents rated on average more than 180 points higher. We will mark this one down to experience.
Kingston 1 v Epsom 1, Surrey League division 1 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston, on 11 November 2024
The clash of the 2022/23 and 2023/24 Surrey division 1 champions promised to be a critical match in the 2024/25 season, and there was a real sense of occasion, Epsom having brought additional players to take part in our regular rated friendlies, and with a gaggle of home spectators there to support us (I am grateful to FM Vladimir Li for his impressions as the games were in progress).
The line-ups revealed that Kingston would have a rating advantage on every board, but the differences on boards 1 and 3 were small, and (after the toss had to be repeated because my lightweight 20p coin escaped behind the Willoughby’s heating system; I was more careful with the pound used for the replay) Epsom would have White on the odd boards, so those boards were likely to be critical.
None of the opening phases suggested much advantage for either side in any game. But there was a sudden finish on board 6. Luca Buanne and Chris Wright had reached a tense queenless middle game when Chris miscalculated, and Luca quickly won decisive material.
Next to finish was board 7, where Peter Hasson had Black against Epsom president Marcus Gosling. Peter had hoped to make something out of a flaw in White’s pawn structure, but after the major pieces were exchanged on the open a-file, White was able to straighten the pawns out, leaving a blocked position in which progress could not be made. This was the final position, with White set to recapture Black’s light-squared bishop.
By this stage we seemed to have a clear advantage on board 4, and probable advantages on boards 2 and 8, the other games in which we had White. Even with David Maycock apparently under some pressure against IM Graeme Buckley on board 1 (although analysis subsequently showed that the position was just level but difficult for both sides), Peter Lalić’s draw with Black on board 3 v Zain Patel was therefore a good result. Against strong juniors, small rating advantages do not mean much. Peter steered into the sort of queenless middle game with which he is more familiar than most of us, and did have one momentary opportunity on move 17.
Epsom played the French Defence on three of their four black boards. The Kingston players had three different responses, all of them successful. In David Rowson’s game on board 8, the kings castled on opposite wings, and after his opponent’s 30th move David was ready with a crushing pawn sacrifice.
On board 4, Mike Healey took a different approach against James McCarthy, offering an early gambit. Mike has annotated this characteristically imaginative and dynamic game in the Games section, but we will show the denouement here. We join the action after Black’s 22nd move, Ba4, giving White a decision. Mike’s choice was spectacular. Standing back with the benefit of hindsight, what made it work? The black pawn on f7 is overloaded, defending the pawn on e6 and the hole on g6 which are both under fire. Black’s queen’s bishop, which might have defended those squares, is absent on a queenside raid. White’s king’s bishop might also appear to be absent on the queenside, but even from b1 it can attack the hole. Fasten your seatbelts.
The last three games finished almost simultaneously. Peter Large showed a third contrasting response to the French Defence on board 2 against Susan Lalić. Where David Rowson and his opponent had castled on opposite sides and pushed pawns against their opponent’s king, Peter and Susan castled on opposite sides and pushed pawns in front of the own king; counter-intuitive but equally good for White.
Perhaps as might be expected in a game between two such strong players, there were few significant mistakes, as measured by jumps in the computer evaluation. White won because he was able to develop his initiative on the kingside while Black’s on the other wing was blocked. In this position below, after Black’s 21st move, the player with White following the standard recipe of opening files against the enemy king might have tried b3. But this loses White’s advantage; after 21. b3 cxb3 22. Bxb3 Nb6, Black can get a knight to c4, which matters more than the open file. Instead 21. f5 was the key breakthrough.
So Kingston had won all four games with White. What of the remaining games in which our players had Black? On board 5, IM John Hawksworth had Black against FM and former British champion Peter Lee, a measure of the quality in depth of Surrey League chess these days. The latter played an enterprising pawn sacrifice 11. b4 in the position below, aiming to play against the weak pawn on d6.
That draw made it four wins with White and three draws with Black. The last game to finish, and the hardest to evaluate in play, was the board 1 match-up between IM Graeme Buckley v hungry wannabe David Maycock. The opening was characterised by masterly play on both sides which created an imbalance: Black had an extra pawn, but at the price of a broken kingside structure which would allow White attacking chances. White was faced with a critical choice at move 25.
With two extra passed pawns on the queenside and a time advantage, David converted smoothly, the only winner with the black pieces on the night. It gave Kingston a margin of victory which seems flattering given how tense the games were. Early matches this season suggest that home advantage is considerable, and the race may be close, so it is useful to have put a strong net run rate/goal difference in the bank.
Peter Andrews, Kingston captain in Surrey League division 1
Kingston B v Maidenhead B, Thames Valley League division 2 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 4 November 2024
This was a very close-run thing. In ratings terms we should have won the match comfortably – we had a big ratings plus on the top three boards and smaller pluses on the bottom three. But a couple of hours into the match, with Kingston 2-0 down after blunders by Peter Roche on board 4 and Jon Eckert on 5, it did not feel like that at all. Maidenhead B had won both their early Thames Valley division 2 fixtures, and I feared they were going to claim another scalp.
The tide began to turn when the ever reliable Peter Andrews, playing Black, defeated Maidenhead veteran Nigel Dennis on board 3.
We were at last on the scoreboard. Board 1 looked tight, board 2 was impenetrable and had been unbalanced from an early stage, but on board 6 Alicia Mason looked like she had an edge with White against Yury Krylov. Could she convert? The match now seemed to hinge on her doing so.
Alicia, who had White, has kindly annotated her game for the Games section. She had a small plus throughout, but her opponent kept very nearly equalising. The game was rich in tactical possibilities, and, as Alicia very honestly admits in her annotation, there were a couple of sacs she missed that would have given her a winning advantage much earlier. But in the end, despite being in short of time, she found a neat combination to mate her opponent with queen and knight to level the match at 2-2. This was the final position after 44. Ne5# (how pleasant to mate with a knight move and get a royal fork at the same time!)
Now all eyes were on boards 1 and 2. David Rowson’s game had been fascinating throughout. He picks up the story after move 6.
The game ended in a draw and, since David has promised to annotate it for the Games section when he has time, I will not attempt to follow its twists and turns here. A draw was agreed in the position below:
David’s summing up afterwards was characteristically disarming: “In retrospect it was a very interesting game. There seemed to be a lot of points where I had to make difficult decisions, and generally I made the wrong ones according to Stockfish, which does, however, assess the final position as only very slightly favourable to Black, despite the bishop on e4 and the grip he has on the kingside. I’ve discovered that maybe my opening pawn grab wasn’t so bad after all – it’s been played by Tiviakov and Smirin. The problem was how I followed it up!”
The draw on board 2 left the match tied at 2.5-2.5. Could Peter Hasson, with Black on board 1, put the ball in the back of the net on his home debut for Kingston. His doughty opponent, Majid Mashayekh, seemed intent on parking the bus and playing for a draw – he may have looked at that 2-0 scoreline early on and decided a draw would be enough to win the match for Maidenhead. He was also heavily outrated, so a draw with White would have been a perfectly acceptable result, but Peter had other ideas, as he explains below:
Thanks to Peter’s clever combination, we were home and had survived that early scare. Well done to Maidenhead B for making such a fight of it given that they were heavily outrated and had lost their top board just hours before the match. We were mighty relieved to get the win, and are now 2/2 in Thames Valley division 2. It is, though, far too soon to be dreaming of glory. This eight-team division, with matches home and away, is going to be a long slog.
Kingston C v Maidenhead D, Thames Valley League division X match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 4 November 2024
Maidenhead sent two teams to Kingston on Monday 4 November – their B and D sides – which is no mean feat considering the distance and logistics. They would have managed to get all 10 players over to us, too, but for a late dropout from the B team, which left them one short and meant their D team top board had to move up to the Bs. That default was important in ensuring a Kingston victory in a four-board match.
We had juniors Jaden Mistry and William Lin on boards 1 and 2, and both played forceful games to win against decent opponents. Rob Taylor lost on board 3 and looked at bit disconsolate – “take the positives”, as they say, Rob, the wheel will turn – and Colin Lyle won by default on board 4 to complete a welcome 3-1 TVX victory. Kingston have half a dozen promising juniors, and they are very important to the future of the club.
Surbiton B v Kingston B, Thames Valley League division 2 match played at Fircroft, Surbiton on 30 October 2024
This was a very satisfying evening. We had set out with a clear strategy in this match: to win with White and draw with Black, and that is exactly what we did across all six boards, giving Kingston an emphatic 4.5-1.5 victory against our neighbours and kicking off our Thames Valley division 2 campaign in style.
The first game to finish was on board 4, where Alan Scrimgour – with Black – and Andrew Boughen agreed a draw after 13 moves in the position below. Black has certainly equalised and may even have a small plus, but given the team strategy this was a perfectly satisfactory start.
Board 6, between Surbiton legend Paul Durrant (how good to see him back playing competitive chess) and Jon Eckert, also ended in a draw. Paul was a pawn to the good, but Jon had an initiative which Paul considered sufficient compensation, and peace was declared in the position below.
The critical board 2 game between Will Taylor, with Black, and Joshua Pirgon was also drawn after a dry, technical struggle in the Petrov Defence. We had identified Josh as a dangerous young player likely to turn out for Surbiton on board 2 or 3, and Will was the perfect opponent to steer him away from the sort of tactical melee in which he excels. The final position, with White to play, is stone-cold level.
Half the mission had been accomplished. Now could the Kingston players with the White pieces keep their side of the bargain? Peter Andrews, up against old adversary and Surbiton captain Nick Faulks on board 3, certainly could. He had the upper hand from an early stage and we were confident he would convert, which he did after a couple of hours’ play.
Kingston were now 2.5-1.5 up and we were feeling comfortable. Board 5 was looking good for us, and board 1 perhaps drawish. On board 5, Stephen Lovell was making one of his rare appearances for Kingston. It is always very welcome when he does have time to turn out, because he is a strong player whose rating would most likely be 2000-plus if he played regularly. Here he played an excellent game against the very experienced Graham Alcock. Things were level until Graham made a slip in opening up the position on his 26th move.
That was the match done and dusted, and David Rowson on board 1 then made it the perfect evening by winning against Liam Bayly – these two are also old adversaries – as Liam’s clock started to run down.
Hounslow C v Kingston C, Thames Valley League division X match played at the Royal British Legion, Hounslow on 28 October 2024
I intend to pass very quickly over this match. We lost 4-0 to a much higher-rated Hounslow team, and you may think anything I say constitutes sour grapes, but in fact the match was played in what we considered unsatisfactory conditions – a noisy bar area which was certainly not an appropriate environment for rated chess.
Kingston captain Jon Eckert decided to proceed with the match – in conditions really only suitable for friendly, beer-fuelled blitz – on the grounds that his players had made the long journey over to Hounslow and were there to play chess. But the Kingston club has made representations to the league about the conditions in which the match was played, and will be seeking assurances that they will not be repeated against a visiting Kingston team.
