Played at All Saints Church, Kingston, 26 March 2025

The 11th All Saints Blitz tournament was the most well-attended so far with 16 players convening at the central Kingston church. Three-time winner IM Peter Large, the favourite on form and rating, left it until the fifth and last round game against former winner Robin Haldane from Streatham to secure first place. Peter had dropped a half-point against Surbiton’s Chris Briscoe in round 3, whereas Robin had breezed through the tournament, including disposing of Chris in the fourth round.

During the midway break, Robin Kerremans invited us to visit his new boardgames café in Teddington, Drinks and Dice. It offers all sorts of board games and is open every day except Sunday. We encourage chess players to go along and discover some other wonderful games.

The game between Peter Large and the young Surbiton player Joshua Pirgon in the fourth round had an unusual ending. In an even heavy pieces endgame, the players were moving their rooks backwards and forwards on the same file and it seemed a draw by threefold repetition was imminent. However, Peter deviated by moving his h-pawn thus avoiding the draw. There followed a quick succession of moves which disturbed the former equilibrium. Under time pressure, Joshua blundered against his more experienced opponent. As he realised that he had just lost his queen, Joshua threw his head back dejectedly becoming frozen in space and time. At this point, I stepped forward prematurely with my iPad to confirm the result. However, Peter Large correctly pointed out, Joshua had not pressed his clock and the game was not over. We waited sympathetically until the time ran out, Joshua still frozen. At least he had held his own against the international master until the sudden end.

Kingston’s John Bussmann did exceptionally well in winning four games on the trot, losing only to Chris Briscoe in the last round. This is not reflected in the results because John registered too late to be automatically paired in the first round and was given a null bye. However, he managed to arrive before play began and was given an opponent. Hence all 16 players obtained five games.

The decider between Robin Haldane and Peter Large was a tricky knight and pawns endgame where there was no time to calculate and intuition was critical. It was a knife-edge position whereby the players had to decide whether to grab an extra pawn at the expense of losing a pawn. Robin explained afterwards that he was torn between seeking a draw and seeking a win. It didn’t help that he couldn’t read the timer properly: he had picked up his glasses case which contained not his reading glasses but his sunglasses. He could make out that he had less than a minute left but was uncertain of the number of seconds. There is a lesson there about checking the contents of your glasses case before setting out to play a chess game.

To celebrate Peter’s fourth All Saints victory, the prize was a larger chocolate confection than usual. Indeed, it was so large, that I felt obliged to issue a cholesterol warning when presenting the giant Easter egg.

Results (>50%)

4½/5 IM Peter Large
4/5 Robin Haldane
3½/5 CM Chris Briscoe
3/5 Joshua Pirgon, John Bussmann, CM Anthony Hughes

Past winners

Tony Hughes (Wimbledon) January 2024
Tony Hughes (Wimbledon) February 2024
David Rowson (Kingston) March 2024
Tony Hughes (Wimbledon) April 2024
Robin Haldane (Streatham) May 2024
Alan Hayward (Pimlico) September 2024
Peter Large (Kingston) October 2024
Peter Large (Kingston) November 2024
Peter Large (Kingston) January 2025
John Hawksworth (Kingston) February 2025

Social Chess at All Saints on Wednesdays

There is social chess every Wednesday morning open to all, as described in this short video.