Ealing B v Kingston B, Thames Valley League division 2 match played at Actonians Sports Club, London W5 on 27 January 2025
This was a very tight, competitive match, and that Kingston B managed to run out 4-2 winners was a great achievement. We are now 5/5 in division 2 of the Thames Valley League, though with nine fixtures still to go we should not yet put the champagne on ice.
We were admittedly helped by the fact that Ealing lost their board 6 very late due to illness. Their substitute Aleksei Garifov performed well in the opening and was holding his own, but then misplaced his queen and omitted to castle. Making his debut for Kingston, Homayoon Froogh (father of Zubair, who was playing on board 5) needed no second invitation to launch a decisive tactic.
The Ealing player did not choose the best continuation, suffered even heavier material loss and resigned after 28 moves. A winning debut for Homayoon and an encouraging early lead for Kingston. The other five games, however, were fiercely contested and went on late into the night.
Froogh Junior had a fascinating struggle with Sagnik Chatterjee on board 5. This game was pivotal to the match because if could have gone either way deep into the rook and pawn endgame with which it concluded. The position shown below is probably drawn and there were points earlier where Black could surely have drawn by repetition.
But Sagnik is young, the game had been very competitive and the juices were flowing. He banked everything on his a-pawn and rushed his king over to support it. But he underestimated the power of d6, defended inaccurately in a time scramble and was overwhelmed by White’s kingside pawns before he could get his own passed pawn home.
Frooghs 2 Ealing 0. But Ealing were winning on board 3, where Jack Sheard was getting the better of Jon Eckert. The position below is level, but Jon, playing White, then goes wrong and the game is lost in the space of a few moves.
Alicia Mason, with Black, played well against the higher-rated Matthew Georgiou and in the position below has excellent drawing chances, but, with time starting to become a concern, one tiny slip put her on the back foot and she never quite recovered.
Alicia, who returned from the US last year, is taking her chess very seriously and knows that the secret to improvement is to learn from your losses, so what did she learn from this one? “This was a frustrating game to lose,” she admitted afterwards, “especially since the blunder came right at the moment where I missed the opportunity to get an advantage. The main thing I want to take away from this game is how I handle the clock. I want to avoid the temptation of rushing my moves in order to stay ahead on the clock if my opponent is short of time, and to remember to check all the forcing moves, whatever the situation. Had I done that here, I would have found the capture on a3 followed by d5, which I realised I’d missed as soon as I played 26…Nc7.”
The match hinged on boards 1 and 2: Peter Andrews with White on 1 against Ealing captain Xavier Cowan, and John Bussmann, who is showing renewed enthusiasm and good form this season, against Hristo Colov on 2. The latter was a high-class affair, but, as so often in evening club chess, tiredness and clock pressure decided the outcome, with White blundering horribly (is that a tautology?).
So to the battle of the board ones – a repeat of the same match-up in the reverse fixture when Kingston were at home last November, and with the same result – wily veteran Andrews got the better of the young gun Cowan. We pick up the game on Black’s 16th move when, says Peter, “d5, which I expected, blew up the centre in my favour. I guess Black felt under a little pressure as I had gained space without allowing him chances.” The analysis below is Peter’s.
Peter rushed off for his customary post-game whisky to calm his shredded nerves and that was that. A very good 4-2 win away against a capable side. If we are not careful we might have to start considering our chances of being promoted to Thames Valley division 1, and pose the question of whether we would want two competing teams in the top division. But not yet: there are still many battles ahead.
Stephen Moss, Kingston club captain
