Surrey League division 4 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 10 January 2022

Chess made a tentative return to the Willoughby Arms on Monday 10 January when Kingston B, captained by Adam Nakar, took on a strong South Norwood B side. It had been touch and go in the week after New Year whether the club would resume playing matches, but in the end the committee agreed they should resume with two important provisos in the face of the Omicron surge: masks should be worn, by players and spectators alike in the playing area unless an attendee was medically exempt, and, where possible, players and supporters should do a lateral flow test to ensure they were Covid-negative before coming along.

In the event, the match went off without a hitch: many thanks to David Howes and his team for complying with good grace. Everyone wore a mask, though some occasionally slipped beneath the nose, and no one complained about the inconvenience. It can be done! These rules are in place subject to a continual review by the club committee.

As usual, it took about 10 minutes to untangle who wanted what time control and to set the clocks accordingly: quickplay, slowplay, Fischer increments, adjournments, adjudications. We had three different sets of playing conditions across the six boards. The Surrey League seems to be oblivious to the fact it is making a laughing stock of itself with all these variations: please just establish one time control for evening chess – 75 minutes with a 10-second increment will do very nicely. The Thames Valley League, with its variable playing session lengths, is even worse. You need to be an international lawyer to understand the league rules and fathom all the possible permutations.

Anyway, on to the match itself. South Norwood were stronger on paper, as Nakar continued with his bold policy of blooding some of the new players who have joined Kingston since we started meeting again last summer. Two of those newbies lost to experienced South Norwoodians on boards 5 and 6, but neither game was a hammering.

Another Kingston newcomer, Yae-Chan Yang, beat the 1660-rated Kaddu Mukasa on board 3 – a terrific result for Yae, who had travelled down from Cambridge (where he is studying physics) to play in the match. He looked suitably delighted, though was still quivering somewhat after constructing a mating attack in an attacking game where no prisoners were taken. Yae does like to play seat-of-the-pants chess.

Gregor Smith, fresh from his triumph in the Richmond Blitz just before Christmas, was on top for most of the game against South Norwood’s Mr Solid, Ken Chamberlain. The game went to adjudication, but Gregor was two pawns up in a rook-and-pawn endgame, and a few days after the match Ken conceded rather than trouble the adjudicators.

On top board, Vladimir Bovtramovich won a fine game against the dangerous attacking player Ron Harris, breaking through with rook and queen and forcing Harris to sac a bishop in a last desperate bid to survive. The effort was unsuccessful and Vladimir’s attack became irresistible. On board 2, the experienced Martin Cath proved too strong for the Kingston captain, outmanoeuvring Adam and demonstrating all the positional skill he has built up during 60 years or more of competitive chess.

So, with the adjudicated game going Kingston’s way, the match stood at 3-3 and the league points were shared. A very satisfactory result for Kingston, who are trying to give new players match experience rather than win promotion to division 3 (that’s our story and we are sticking to it). Above all, the match was a demonstration that chess in masks is practicable, perhaps even enjoyable – especially if you win. And it helps that you can dispense with the mask in the bar downstairs, it being deemed difficult to drink beer through a mask.

Stephen Moss

Surrey League division 2 (Beaumont Cup) match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 6 December 2021

The first Beaumont Cup match of the season and the captain was nervous. After all, 41 years had passed since he had last led out a Kingston team to take their places at the boards. Did he still have what it takes? The loss of the toss might have suggested otherwise. On paper, given the grading disparity, Guildford 3 should have been no match for the cream of Kingston, but were they a banana skin lying in ambush? 

In the event, the Guildford players put up a creditable fight and several of the Kingston players were required to press the grind button to achieve their wins. For some time all the players doggedly stayed in their seats, the atmosphere heavy with concentration. To be honest, it was not so easy to stand up and move around in the central seats anyway, due to a lack of space between the rows, but this was probably all to the good in the case of a player such as myself, who otherwise gets distracted by the other games.

John Foley and Alan Scrimgour made quicker work of it than the rest of us, winning quite early. Mike Healey demonstrated yet again how at home he is defending the Ruy Lopez, and Peter Lalic skilfully tightened the screws on his opponent’s Sicilian centre. Almost from the start of his game, Julian Way was nursing a slight advantage, and it looked like his king march to the far side of the board would see his passed pawn home. However, according to Julian the king took the wrong route, and his opponent Henry Loomis’s resourcefulness, aided by a mobile knight, resulted in a draw by repetition.

My game followed a pattern which is familiar to me. As Black in an English, I was given the two bishops and complacently assumed that I could slowly let the position win itself with natural moves, whatever they might be. I underestimated Trevor Jones’s ability to keep finding strong moves in the middlegame, until the position was looking very good for him, with my king exposed and my pieces not co-ordinating well. I was fortunate to find a way to swap off most of the pieces until an opposite-coloured bishop ending was reached and a draw agreed (game below).

Finally, Will Taylor, who had been a pawn up for much of his game, finished it off in a king and pawn ending. A conclusive win by 6-1. More challenging matches may lie ahead, but it was great that we avoided a banana skin first time out. Thanks to everyone for their participation, and to Greg Heath for all his help in preparing the room for the match.

David Rowson, Kingston Beaumont Cup (Surrey League division 2) captain

Surrey League division 4 match played at the Haywain Brewers Fayre, Epsom on 29 November 2021

At time of writing, I am celebrating: my daughter is turning 2,000 days old! Milestones in days are tragically under-appreciated. It felt almost as long ago that we had our last Centenary Trophy match, but a mere 634 days – not even a million minutes – covers the period between our match in this league against Richmond on 5 March 2020 and this game at Epsom.

Just one player from that Richmond trip can claim to have played in both these matches. Jon Eckert was the experienced top board for this fixture, with five players new to the club this season below him.  Epsom had a similar mix of experience and newcomers – it’s great to see so many new players coming to over-the-board league chess.

After an hour and a quarter’s play, all the queens were still on all the boards and the fights were raging.  Soon after, Kingston’s Jake Grubb finished first, on board 6, some key chances being missed in an unfortunate defeat to the hard-working Epsom captain David Flewellen. Kingston also went down on on board 5 despite a valiant fight.

Jon Eckert won on board 1, building a nice attack and keeping his cool as his veteran opponent Michael Wickham, who has slain me in our last two matches against Epsom, found numerous difficult tactics for him to see past:  2-1 to the hosts. Yae-Chan Yang on board 3 was living precariously, and, after dodging the mines for a while, one was triggered and his position collapsed. 3-1.  Could we get a draw?

Max Mikardo-Greaves had played an excellent game on board 4 against an opponent who on paper was far stronger. His position was close to winning, but a knight tactic proved his undoing. Very unfortunate, but a good topic of discussion for the drive home. John Shanley, though, finished on a high for Kingston. His opponent sacrificed a piece for a dangerous attack early on, but, despite the Black king being forced to trek ignominiously across the board, Shanley kept the attack at bay. As it finally fizzled out, he got to a winning endgame and finished it nicely.

So we lose 4-2.  But plenty to take away and learn from this – all the newcomers insisted they enjoyed their exposure to the rigours of league chess and the traditional journey to the away venue in polar conditions (more exposure, of an icy kind). We will, as they say, take the positives and use the experience to strengthen us for our next match.  There’s less than 1,000 hours between the end of this match and the start of the next one, so the intense mental preparation starts now!

Adam Nakar, Kingston Centenary Trophy (Surrey League division 4) captain

Alexander Cup match (10 boards) played at the Haywain Brewers Fayre, Epsom on 22 November 2021

Wimbledon provocateur Paul Barasi has been complaining that Kingston’s season seems to comprise of nothing but beating up Epsom, and he has a point. After defeating them in the Lauder Trophy earlier this month, Kingston have now given their ambitious rival (revived in the past few years by Marcus Gosling and already on course to become one of Surrey’s strongest clubs) a fearful drubbing in the county’s most prestigious cup competition.
 
Barasi complained when, on Twitter, Kingston described the Lauder win as “epic”, doubting that Epsom deserved the epithet. But Kingston have struggled in the past decade or so, whereas reborn Epsom have been soaring, and the Lauder victory felt like a watershed. This much-anticipated Alexander Cup match was an even more significant moment, with Gosling & Co out for revenge, Epsom enjoying home advantage and Kingston captain John Foley reminding his troops that Kingston had not won the Alexander Cup since 1976.

Kingston had an average rating advantage of around 30 points a board (in the new four-digit classification), but a close match was nonetheless anticipated. Epsom, in their impressive pub venue with a quiet playing room and tables in an adjoining room for social chess, had installed a large scoreboard and bought pricey new wooden boards for what they clearly saw as a defining match. But as the night wore on and the scoreboard recorded their tale of woe, they must have wished they had kept it all a little more low key.

Alan Scrimgour, playing his trusty Sicilian on board 7, led the way for Kingston with a 22-move victory over Natasha Regan, whose ambitious piece sacrifice backfired. Epsom’s Daniel Young on board 4 tried a speculative knight manoeuvre that came unstuck against Kingston’s wily David Rowson. It was 2-0, and Epsom may already have been wishing they hadn’t invested in the new scoreboard.

Kingston were soon sprinting ahead, with a smooth win on board 3 for David Maycock over Kevin Thurlow, and a very fine victory by John Bussmann over former Kingston regular Matthew Baker. Bussmann is noted as a sharp tactician, but here he played with great positional precision in a game which chess luminary John Saunders later described as the “game of the day”. Veterans Jon Eckert and Malcolm Groom agreed a draw on board 10, giving Epsom their first half point, but the writing was already on the wall. Literally, thanks to that wretched giant scoreboard.
 
Paul Gibbons, playing his first match of the season for Kingston, secured a draw on board 8 that took the running points total to five, and soon after Peter Lalić, on board 2, produced a spectacular double-piece sacrifice to force checkmate and take Kingston over the finishing line and into the semi-finals. The Lalić game was a truly extraordinary one, with Peter playing a characteristically imaginative and challenging opening which completely bamboozled his opponent, Michael Dams. Saunders points out that there is no precedent among ChessBase’s new Mega DataBase 2022’s 9.2 million games for the first two moves played in this encounter: 1. Nc3 e6 2. d3 Bb4. And it got crazier from there.

The match had been won, the champagne corks were already popping back at the Willoughby Arms – metaphorically speaking that is: in reality Greg Heath was having another beer and the ascetic twentysomethings following the match via WhatsApp were sipping their glasses of Diet Coke – and all that remained was the mopping up. At Epsom, not the Willoughby.
 
John Foley won a queenless middlegame with a precisely calculated pawn advance against Robert Hamilton on board 6; Will Taylor (having nobly made the trek down from Walthamstow) drew with Epsom president Marcus Gosling on board 5; and, in the last game to finish, IM Peter Large won a roller-coaster struggle with Mike Healey to record Epsom’s sole win of the evening, drawing Healey’s king into a mating net with Large’s own king and two bishops. Healey thought he had drawing chances if he had traded his rook for one of those killer bishops, but went for glory and paid the price.
 
By then, though, the match was long over and Kingston were celebrating, with a final result of 7.5-2.5. Gosling promised there would be a painful post-mortem – he threw an imaginary punch as he said it – and next year Epsom will be back even stronger. Their ambition knows no bounds, and good for them. But for the moment, Kingston had the spoils and Foley’s dream of winning the Alexander Cup for the first time in almost 50 years was still alive.

Stephen Moss

Thames Valley League division 2 match played at the United Reformed Church, Tolworth on 2 November 2021

Local rivalry renewed and once again Kingston are in charge against the auld enemy, though it was admittedly the Kingston first team up against Surbiton B in division 2 of the Thames Valley League. Both teams were missing key personnel, and Kingston suffered a late withdrawal, which meant that the captain himself had to play – never a happy situation. For a long time, it looked as if Surbiton would prevail, but at the end, as the cold in their wintry new church venue told, there were some strange twists that changed the picture entirely.

The facts. Peter Lalic, whose arrival at Kingston alongside David Maycock has helped to transform the club’s fortunes, played the Budapest Gambit and won a pleasing game against Liam Bayly on top board. Jon Eckert overcame a ratings deficit of 140 points and a poor lifetime score against his opponent to beat Paul Dupré in an excellent game on board 2. On board 3, Surbiton’s Nick Faulks returned the favour by overturning another large ratings deficit to defeat Kingston’s David Rowson.

From Eckert v Dupré, White to play and checkmate in 15 moves ignoring desperadoes (answer)

I was very lucky to squeeze a draw out of my game on board 5 against the solid and thoughtful David Cole. I sacrificed (or perhaps just lost) a pawn for what turned out to be nothing early on, and was always up against it. David had what was almost certainly a winning rook endgame but happily no time to prosecute it, so rather than trying to win on the increment took my rather desperate draw offer. On board 6, Adam Nakar dropped a piece early and looked certain to lose, but fought valiantly and secured a miracle draw two pawns down in an endgame where opposite-coloured bishops were the only pieces left on the board. He has written a blog about the joys of such endings – the point being that with opposite-coloured bishops you should never give up even the least promising-looking of positions.

That made it 3-2 to Kingston, so it all hinged on board 4. Cue anti-climax: the two players – Kingston’s extremely promising newcomer John Shanley (the medical hero of the Maidenhead match the previous week) and Surbiton’s Andrew Boughen – adjourned. Shanley has the edge and I am foolishly already calling the match as a win for Kingston, but we won’t have a definitive result for a couple of weeks.

This raises all sorts of questions. Should we really still be playing adjournments in the age of engines and digital clocks that allow for increments so avoid flagging? Why on earth does the Thames Valley League permit a variety of different time controls to be played in the same match? Quickplay on some boards; slowplay on other boards; even different forms of quickplay, with some players allowed to opt for increments and others for fixed times. We were using three different time controls across six boards, which is madness, yet permissible under Thames Valley rules.

It’s a shambles, a nightmare for captains, confusing for players and needs to be rationalised. Some clubs opt for two-and-a-half-hour playing sessions and others for three-hour sessions, each of which comes with a variety of different time controls, adding to the confusion. I count at least six different time controls in use in the league. Sorry, but this needs to be looked at as soon as possible. Why not 75 minutes and a 10-second increment for all evening chess? That’s fair, easy to understand and provides sufficient time for a perfectly good game.

 A blog by club president John Foley covers these issues in more detail 

But enough ranting. Thanks to Surbiton for an excellent match that was in the balance to the end – indeed could, I suppose, still be said to be in the balance, though the doctor’s diagnosis is that his opponent is unlikely to recover. It’s nice for the club to be off the mark in the Thames Valley. We would love to be back in division 1. And, speaking for myself, I was extremely pleased to squeak a draw as a last-minute substitute after the Maidenhead disaster last week. My season is up and running … or at least stumbling.

Stephen Moss, Kingston Thames Valley captain

* John Shanley drew his adjourned game when it was resumed after a two-week delay. He was a little disappointed not to convert his advantage, but, as his opponent said, a computer’s evaluation that you have a 2.7 plus is not so easy to convert in practical play in a rook v bishop and knight endgame. In the end, a draw was agreed, so Kingston did win the match, getting us off the mark in Thames Valley League division 2, which we are very hopeful of winning this season (famous last words).

Lauder Trophy match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 1 November 2021

Epsom, the brash new boys on the Surrey club chess scene, arrived at the Willoughby Arms full of hope and self-belief for the opening round of the 2021/22 Lauder Trophy. Happily, Kingston were able to snuff out the potent threat they posed and secure a 4-2 win that put them back in the hunt for the cup they won in 2018/19 but lost to South Norwood in the recent final of the 2019/20 competition (the 2020/21 event was lost completely to the pandemic).

There was a wonderful match-up on board 1 between Kingston’s bright new teenage star David Maycock, who recently came third alongside GMs Keith Arkell and Mark Hebden in the Hull Weekender, and Epsom’s veteran international master Peter Large. Their game was complex (too complex for me to grasp at least), but Large – with white – gradually took control, built up a time advantage, kept squeezing, and Maycock was eventually forced to resign. A victory for experience over youth.

On board 2, the last game to finish, Vladimir Bovtramovics came out on top in a tense struggle with Epsom captain Marcus Gosling, whose piece sacrifice proved to be unsound; wily tactician John Bussmann forced a quick win on board 3 when Malcolm Groom played the London System but omitted to castle; Jon Eckert, who has made an excellent start to the season, won efficiently on board 4; Yae-Chan Yang, returning to chess after five years and making his league debut for the club, overwhelmed his opponent on board 5, sidestepping the Hillbilly attack against his Caro Kann and coolly building his own attack while playing on the increment (though he said later that the coolness was an illusion and tribute to his acting skills because inside he was shaking throughout); Jake Grubb, another Kingston league debutant, fought bravely but eventually succumbed to a tide of black pawns sweeping up the board.

A terrific match, played in an excellent spirit in front of almost 20 Kingstonians who had come along to support. Thanks to the Willoughby, as ever, for hosting, with supporters spilling out of the playing room and into the bars and garden. “Bring us back some silverware!,” bellowed Rick the landlord when he learned of Kingston’s progress to the Lauder semi-final, where we will face Ashtead or Dorking. We’ll do our best Rick.

Stephen Moss, Kingston Lauder Trophy captain

Thames Valley League division 2 match played at St Luke’s Community Hall, Maidenhead on 25 October 2021

We lost 4-2 in our first away match of the season. The teams were evenly matched on paper but traversing the M25/M4 corridor in a dark evening is tiring and guarantees a home energy advantage. On top board, Maidenhead’s John Wager (w) beat Julian Way. Team captain Stephen Moss lost to a stronger player on the bottom board and muttered about dropping himself from the squad, a feeling which overtakes us all from time to time. The remaining games were drawn. John Shanley played his first competitive game in many years having returned to chess only recently. The final game to finish was John Foley v Tony Milnes. The opposite bishops endgame was about to be adjourned (yes we still have adjournments in the Thames Valley League) but having sealed the envelope, the players analysed the position and concluded that a draw was inevitable and so another trip to St Luke’s parish hall was avoided.

There was more interest off the board. A junior managed to get locked into the disabled toilet and set off the alarm. The home team ingeniously eventually picked open the lock. Later on, the caretaker, an elderly gentleman collapsed in the kitchen and was immediately attended to by John Shanley who in real life is a doctor at Kingston Hospital. Two home players stayed on at the end of the match waiting for an ambulance. In the end, the patient decided he wanted to go home – so they made sure he got home alright and he was going to see the doctor the following day. John calmly returned to the board to secure a draw. The Maidenhead captain Nigel Smith sent his club’s thanks for providing medical assistance.

John Foley

Lauder Trophy final against South Norwood played at the neutral venue of Ashtead Peace Memorial Hall on 19 October 2021

Which of course is another way of saying we lost 4-2 in the final to South Norwood (well done to them and their canny captain David Howes). The fault was largely mine as captain, not least as I failed to explain the time control properly to Murugan Kanagasapay (playing on board 5 for Kingston). He didn’t realise he was going to get an extra 20 minutes after the first hour and hurried through his moves as the initial control approached, blundering and eventually losing the game.

But there were no excuses really. Adam Nakar was furious with himself for failing to convert a wonderful attacking position on board 4; John Bussmann was outfoxed by Paul Dupré on board 2; Jon Eckert drew a sharp game on board 3; Greg Heath won nicely for Kingston on board 6; and honours were shared in the game on top board between Kingston’s David Maycock and South Norwood’s flagbearer Tariq Oozerally.

A good match, but Kingston’s luck ran out after our somewhat fortuitous victory in the semi-final over Guildford. No time to mope, though. This was the conclusion of the Covid-paused 2019/20 Lauder Trophy; the 2020/21 tournament was lost completely; but in a week we begin our 2021/22 campaign. There hasn’t even been time to sack the captain, despite protests among Kingston’s loyal fan base and moves to engineer an injection of funds from a foreign oligarch to boost the team. I have vowed to stay on and turn things round – at least until I can secure a multimillion-pound payoff.

Stephen Moss, Kingston Lauder Trophy captain

Lauder Trophy semi-final (resumption of the Covid-suspended 2019-20 competition) played at the Guildford Institute on 20 September 2021

Well, that was pretty amazing. Two-thirds of the way through this semi-final match, Kingston were losing 2.5 to 0.5, and looked almost certain to be beaten and to have their hands prised from the Lauder Trophy, which we had won in 2018-19. But there was to be the strangest of conclusions to this extraordinary match …

First, some context. Kingston are the holders of the Lauder Trophy, having won it in 2018-19 for the first time in almost two decades. This semi-final was part of the 2019-20 competition. The match had been due to be played in March 2020, but we all know what happened in that dire month. The Surrey Chess Association decided to play the 2019-20 tournament to a conclusion, pretend that 2020/21 never happened (which of course it didn’t chess-wise) and start the 2021/22 tournament in November. Pity the poor Lauder Trophy captain who has to juggle all this.

The other key point about the Lauder is that there is a collective grade limit. We had been waiting so long to play this match that the English Chess Federation has changed the grading system from three digits to four in the interim, so what used to be an overall limit for the competition of 841 has become one of 10,505 (why not 10,500 for simplicity?). Captains can slice their team any way they like, but if you use up 2800 points by having Magnus Carlsen on board 1, you are likely to be quite weak on the bottom boards. That is the beauty of the competition: in theory you get very well-balanced matches (as we saw at Guildford). One does, however, always have to keep an eye on unscrupulous captains putting in players on dodgy estimated grades (Carlsen has no official Surrey rating, so if he did wander into the Willoughby Arms for a game I’d probably seek to play him in the Lauder at an estimated grade of around 1600).

The semi-final was played at Guildford at their terrific venue and in an excellent atmosphere. There were two titans on board 1 – John Foley for Kingston and Julien Shepley (complete with generous lockdown beard) for Guildford, and these old rivals fairly rapidly agreed a draw. Greg Heath went wrong in a good position on board 6 and lost; Jon Eckert played what he said later was a very sharp opening as black on board 3 and also came unstuck. It was 2.5-0.5 to Guildford, with the other three games looking evenly balanced and an hour still to play. Things looked ominous, and I was resigned to handing the battered trophy, which I had brought along, over to Guildford’s Lauder captain, Mike Gunn.

But miracles do happen. Ljubica Lazarevic won well against a higher-rated player on board 4 – she said she’d swindled him but we are convinced she was in control throughout. John Bussmann drew on board 2 – a game he felt he should have won (but Jon always feels that): 3-2 to Guildford. Since they had won on board 3, I feared that was the match gone. Surely board count would consign Kingston to defeat.

There was, though, to be one final twist: Oliver Luen won brilliantly on board 5 to equalise the score at 3-3. Board count – with top board scoring six points down to bottom board scoring just one – was also equal, with the decisive games scoring 5-5. And a quick consultation of the Surrey association rules by Julian Way, who had generously come along to support Kingston, showed that, in the event of a tie on board count, the bottom board score was eliminated first, leaving Kingston the winners.

Gunn took the news with remarkable equanimity, as Kingston had been under the cosh all night and only squeezed through on a technicality. We now face South Norwood in the final at the neutral venue of Ashtead on Tuesday 19 October. I’m not sure my nerves can take it.

Stephen Moss, Kingston Lauder Trophy captain