Kingston 1 v Kingston 2, Surrey League division 1 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 21 September 2026

Kingston 2 were promoted to Surrey League division 1 after the 2025-26 season, and under league rules that meant the new season had to start with the two matches between Kingston 1 and Kingston 2, to avoid any suggestion of collusion to achieve a particular result.

I was in the unusual position of captaining both sides, and slightly adjusted the team selection to allow two young newcomers, Harvey Li and Joshua Pirgon, to have a go against two of the first-team stars, when on strict rating order they would themselves have played in the first team. Nevertheless the first team had a huge rating advantage, well over 200 points a board.

Although the final score looks convincing, the course of the match was anything but. Every game was a hard slog, with all going the distance in terms of time and most in terms of move count. Not an easy match with which to start this season’s resolution of shorter reports.   

White had a good evening. The first team won all four of its games with White on the odd boards, while the second team took draws on 2, 4 and 6, and were no worse on 8 until close to the end.     

To start with the first-team games with White. Stephen Moss had warned Harvey Li to expect a Spanish from David Maycock, from which 12-year-old Harvey politely but firmly demurred since he rarely plays 1…e5.  By a circuitous route the game was actually a French, from which David got nothing until the late middle game. Then a subtlety gave him a tempo to re-route a knight, allowing him to turn the screw, win a critical pawn, and eventually reach a winning queen v two rooks endgame.

On board 3, the players castled on opposite sides. Emerging from the opening, Tom Mayers missed an unusual fork of two pawns by John Hawksworth’s queen. This opened a line against John’s king, but his position was solid, enabling him to win two more pawns and grind Tom down in the ending.

On board 5, Jon Eckert’s renowned French resisted Jasper Tambini’s renowned aggression against it down to a rook and pawn ending in which White had only a slender edge, but one miscalculation quickly turned that edge into a win. On board 7, David Rowson had an unconvincing opening against Stephen Moss. As on board 3, kings castled on opposite sides, and David was able to co-ordinate his pieces more effectively to develop an attack which was enough to lead to a decisive endgame advantage.

Among the second-team games with White, John Bussmann had an edge throughout against Julian Way on board 4, and missed an opportunity for a decisive breakthrough just before the end, when he still had a slight edge in a position agreed as a draw.

Warren-Scrimgour (pictured, top) on board 8 was even for a long time. Seth gave up a pawn, but there seemed no chance that Alan could unravel without giving it back. The conundrum was solved with a trademark Scrimgour exchange sacrifice. Although the evaluation immediately after the sacrifice was still level, White’s game was more difficult for a human to play. Alan was able to win back the exchange by trapping Seth’s rook in mid-board and get his pawns rolling, after which the win was more comfortable than had seemed likely for most of the evening.

Board 2, Pirgon-Large, was the last game to finish. To a spectator’s eye, White seemed to have a useful space advantage for much of the game, but Black’s position had insufficient weaknesses for White to stretch the defence and the evaluation was always well within the drawing range, at least until time was short enough that the remainder of the game was unrecorded. A draw against IM Large was an encouraging start to Joshua’s Kingston career.

Board 6 saw the welcome return to our midst of Ian Mason from the far side of the Atlantic, from which he has sometimes joined KCC online. Ian has taken up the role of committee secretary at Kingston, and in his opening game he had to face your correspondent. This game featured the only real middlegame drama. As so often these days it was an opportunity I missed, and only discovered when looking at the game with the machine.  What should Black play here?

Overall, then, a useful 6.5-1.5 win for the first team in their attempt to retain the title, but the second team showed enough against what has after all been the strongest side in the division to suggest that they could severely test the rest of the opposition. And we may hope that having eight such tough games will shake the rust off all the participants for the rest of the season.  

Peter Andrews is Kingston first-team captain and club chair