Marcus Gosling won the XV All Saints Blitz on 29 October 2025 continuing a strong run of form. Above: receiving the prize from John Foley

The event was restricted to twelve registrants because the playing area is now shared with the seasonal Christmas card display. We added four walk-ins to the starting line-up, as befits a friendly event. We lacked some regulars: Robin Haldane, Chris Briscoe and John Hawksworth whilst Peter Large was battling in the FIDE World Senior Championships in Gallipoli, Italy. Hence, there was a golden opportunity for a new recipient of the first prize – the coveted box of Lindor chocolates.

When the monthly blitz takes place at half term, we get a wider range of participants. Hence, we were graced by the presence of Marcus Gosling, the president of Epsom Chess Club. Marcus’s rating has been on an upward trajectory since the beginning of last year and he recently joined the 2000 club. We suspect he is studying chess seriously at last or maybe Epsom salts have some special ingredient. It is rumoured he is working on a book provisionally titled “From suburban obscurity to international fame.”

Marcus deserves praise for rising to the occasion and winning his first five games defeating the highest rated entrant Graham Keane (2119). In the final round, he lost to Josh Pirgon so both players ended up with 5/6. Marcus received the prize on tie-break.¹

Marcus was modest in victory declaring that “Joshua is a more deserving winner, as he got the better of me in our individual encounter – there is no perfect tie-break solution.” However, after the number of entrants was expanded, we extended the tournament from five rounds to six rounds. If we had remained with five rounds then Marcus would have been the clear winner.

Discontented at his last round loss, Marcus immediately burned the midnight oil and has found a more astute defence in the King’s Indian courtesy of Svetozar Gligorić. His quest for self-improvment is neverending.

The other player who made a mark was junior Ethan Kim, a graduate of the Kingston Chess Academy, who scored 4/6 defeating Josh in the first round and losing to Graham and Marcus.

Final standings

5/6 Marcus Gosling, Josh Pirgon
4/6 Ethan Kim, Anthony Hughes, Graham Keane
3/6 Jon Eckert, Alan Hayward, David Shalom, Peter Roche, Kevin Bowyer, Stephen Moss.

Complete standings

Note

1. We pre-declared the Bucholz tie-break method which calculates the sum of the opponents’ scores. The decisive factor was that Marcus had defeated Graham Keane (4/6) whereas Josh did not defeat any players on 4/6. Whilst a Direct Encounter tie-break would have given the prize to Josh, it would complicate matters if there were several people on the same final score. FIDE has committees to deal with the thorny issue of tie-breaks. The summary opinion of Stephen Moss who organises the Kingston Invitational is that “all tie-break systems are flawed”. Whatever method we select, the match results will contrive to prove it wrong.
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