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