This match was played three days before Christmas, but a very strong Kingston team were not in the mood to show any seasonal goodwill to the visitors from Richmond, and the latter were (to use tennis parlance) bagelled, losing 6-0 despite showing plenty of fight. The result meant that Kingston A would be top of the Thames Valley division 1 table over Christmas and New Year.

Kingston A had a very pleasant time on our visit to Ealing. I was in a good mood before the match had even started. We arrived to find a table strewn with a cornucopia of old chess magazines and books, and we were told we could take any we wanted. With all the material there is online these days, perhaps people don’t value chess books as much as they used to. But I do. I picked up bound volumes of British Chess Magazine for 1994 and 1995, which I would happily have paid money for, and which I have been poring over ever since. Bliss.

This was a well-contested match between two evenly matched teams. Ed Mospan, deputising for Jon Eckert, captained and played on board 1, losing with Black to Alex McTavish. Nette Robinson, with White on board 4, levelled the score; Rob Taylor drew on board 2 with Paul Silvester, and the issue was decided in Staines’ favour on board 3, Rashvir Raikmo (again with White) beating Anqi Yang to give the match to Staines by 2.5-1.5.

Epsom were worried enough about this match to use some disinformation tactics in advance – we had been led by our Epsom informant to believe that Graeme Buckley and Susan Lalić would not be in the line-up, but rather that they would feature an array of strong juniors. But it was only a minor surprise to find them entering the Richard Mayo Centre at about 7.20pm, and as it turned out it was not a failure to prepare for those two Masters which cost us the match, but rather a collapse on the lower boards.