Kingston B v Richmond A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 5 January 2026
I’m not sure if Kingston have ever previously had two teams in the first division of the Thames Valley League. We may well have, but I haven’t been able to trace a record of it. It’s clearly a challenge for a B team to retain their place in the division, so we are anxious to earn every point we can in order to avoid relegation. Last season just six points would have been sufficient to stay up, but we can’t be sure that will be enough this year.
Therefore our home fixture against Richmond A was another six-pointer, to use the football cliché. We actually outrated our opponents slightly on every board except the top one, so could hope for at least a draw, and the first results suggested that we might expect more.
The board 4 game finished surprisingly early. Against Stephen Lovell’s English Opening, Maks Gajowniczek played ambitiously, but his pawn advances looked to be premature, as his pieces were not well placed and he had kingside weaknesses. In the position below Maks moved 12…d5.
Not long after this, Kingston went two points up with a win on board 6 by Martyn Jones over the always combative Bertie Barlow. This game opened as a French Defence Winawer Variation, in which Black gives up his g- and h-pawns in exchange for White’s d-and e-pawns, leaving an unbalanced position. Martyn allowed a queen exchange, as his outside passed pawns looked more dangerous than Black’s central pawns. This was the situation after White’s 31st move:
Shortly after this, Kingston’s drive for the full points also looked to be almost unstoppable as Homayoon Froogh won with Black to make it a whitewash on the bottom three boards. The opening was a Caro-Kann, with Sampson Low opting for the Advance Variation. Homayoon gained the two bishops and made good use of them, reaching this position:
So we were three-nil up with three games remaining in which to gain the winning half point. On board 3 Alastair Armstrong had chosen the c3 line against Peter Andrews’ Sicilian Defence, and Peter, in an unfamiliar position, had misplaced his king’s knight to c7, where it had very little scope for action. However, Alastair did not choose the best plan and Peter managed to reach a position which was almost level.
Alastair annotated his win on the Richmond club blog, and, in the spirit of inter-club cooperation, the link to his analysis is here. His victory over Peter made the score 3-1 to Kingston, so could we conjure up a half-point for a home win?
The board two game also proved to be a tough one for Kingston. Jasper Tambini, with White, made what seemed a good pawn sacrifice, but John Burke defended carefully and, as sometimes happens, Jasper felt it necessary to make further imaginative sacrifices in order to keep his attack alive. Ultimately, a piece down after a long battle, he had to accept that his opponent had managed to snuff out the attack.
That made the score 3-2 to Kingston with one game left to finish, which was, as luck would have it, my own with Black against the highly rated Mike Healey (our encounter is pictured at the top of the report). From a kind of hybrid Vienna/Italian Opening the game progressed into a queenless middlegame in which neither of us had much activity, or, to put it more accurately, I had almost zero activity and Mike had a little more than zero. As often seems to happen, the game was blown open just when we both had little time left.
My immediate resignation meant that the match was drawn 3-3. This was not a bad result against an A team, but a disappointment considering our impressive 3-0 start. Still, with eight matches left this season we can remain hopeful of survival.
David Rowson is Kingston B captain in Thames Valley League division 1
