Kingston 1 v Coulsdon 1, Surrey League division 1 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 13 October 2025

Coulsdon were severely handicapped in this match by a train stoppage in the Waterloo and Clapham Junction area. Their board 7 defaulted, and several other players lost time which might have proved valuable later, although we made a concession to the circumstances by agreeing to start 10 minutes late. On paper, they were significantly weaker than Kingston below board 1, and weaker than we would expect them to be at home. Nevertheless, halfway through the evening the match could easily have been close, but Kingston pulled away in the closing stages.

The first to finish was Zain Patel, making his very welcome debut for us in local league chess with White against Ishan Ramdewar, and this one was crushing from an early stage.

The Surrey League is privileged to have young entertainers of national status like David Maycock and Supratit Banerjee (pictured at the top of the report) turning out on Monday evenings, and they did not disappoint.

As an interesting psychological footnote, we are indebted to Supratit for the score of this game. The final moves were played more or less on the increment by both players, and David’s score ran out a few moves before the end. Supratit’s was neat and complete, despite the time shortage, the complexity of the game, and even though he had been close to lost for several moves. Some of us barely ever have a complete score of a game that goes the distance. Moral – the best players do not allow their emotions to override their ability to think.

The spectators had expected an early conclusion on board 8, where Jasper Tambini had opened up White’s kingside. But Stockfish actually gave Coulsdon’s Paul Jackson the advantage at this point, and Jasper needed a second round of tactics to win:

On board 3, Peter Large with White survived a moment of real danger against Mark Smith:

On board 6, with Black, Peter Hasson blocked the kingside against Martin Faulkner’s numerical superiority on that side, and was able to spare his queen for a raid which snaffled the a-pawn. It didn’t look like much, but after over 70 moves, it turned out to be enough to win the rook and pawn ending.

John Hawksworth was less fortunate with Black on board 4. He achieved a slight edge against Ian Calvert’s notorious 1. b3, and went into the rook and pawn ending a pawn up. But with both players down to around a minute, he missed a fleeting opportunity to penetrate with his king, and the endgame resolved into a textbook draw with R+P v R with the defending king in front of the pawn, so Black’s extra pawn could not be forced home.  As an aside, this is an ending which comes up often enough to be worth looking up in a book – anyone can draw it against an experienced IM if they know the right plan.

Peter Lalić on board 2, with Black against Evaldas Baltrunas, also reached what looked like a drawn ending, this time with a knight each. But I had experienced his skill with knights in the ending at first hand last week, so had not given up on the win. Peter’s endgame play has been compared to Capablanca’s.* That may be an overstatement, but he does find chances others do not see.

And so a long and well-contested match finished with a rather flattering 7-1 scoreline to Kingston, which may be useful if the battle for the league title is tight at the end of the season. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

* My batting has been compared to Don Bradman’s, ie “it’s not as good”, but I don’t think that was meant in Peter’s case.

Peter Andrews is chair of Kingston and captains the club’s first and second teams in the Surrey League