Hammersmith A v Kingston B, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at the London Mindsports Centre, 21 Dalling Rd, London W6 on 2 April 2026
Unexpectedly, for our players at least, the Candidates broadcasts had a rival last Thursday, as Hammersmith transmitted live on chess.com the games between their A team and our B team. While that may have exposed in real time our many inaccuracies to a global audience, it also allowed our fellow Kingstonians to follow every twist and turn of what proved to be some entertaining and possibly nerve-shredding games.
Several Kingston players had dropped out of the team originally selected due to illness or Easter holiday engagements, so as captain I was very grateful to Constantin Liesch and Genç Taşbaşı for making themselves available at short notice. Hammersmith were also without some of their usual A team players, but they still significantly outrated us.
It was the board 5 game which might have finished first, as Tom Townsend offered Constantin a draw, which the Kingston player had the spirit to refuse, even though at that point he only had a slight advantage. In fact, the first result came on board 3, where Jasper Tambini (pictured above) had played the Advance Variation against Maria-Alexandra Ciocan’s French Defence. In the following position the two players had equal chances:
This win was a fillip for the team and for those watching on Chess.com, and as the other games were still too close to call there was a flicker of hope that we could yet achieve a result against expectations.
On board 2, where I had Black against Luke Lau, I felt that I had equalised in the opening (an Italian Game), but both players were continually faced with difficult choices which had impacts on both sides of the board. After Luke’s 32. h4 this was the position:
The board 6 game began as a Sicilian Defence Alapin Variation, with a fairly level position up to this position:
On board 1 Peter Andrews had opened with his usual English. Stereotypes of this opening as one which generally steers clear of tactics were exposed as totally wide of the mark by the way the game went. Peter gained an extra pawn (on c5), but also exchanged his g2 bishop for Black’s c6 knight, commenting afterwards that “giving up the two bishops is a high price to pay”. Unusually, Ali Hill positioned his bishops on h4 and h5, and his control of the e-file gave him the advantage:
John Foley succinctly summed up both his journey to the venue and the way his game started as follows: “I was stuck in traffic, so bailed out and Limed it to Hammersmith 20 minutes late. I rattled off the trusty Caro-Kann and times were level after 19 moves.” There were many twists and turns in this game too, until the position simplified, if that is the appropriate word, into a queen and bishop ending where John had an extra pawn:
With five of the six games concluded, Kingston B had now lost the match, trailing 3.5-1.5, but on board 5 Constantin Liesch was still fighting to try to win a rook ending against his much higher-rated opponent. This nearly backfired when, in time trouble, he allowed his opponent the chance to advance his passed pawn to e2 at a moment when Constantin’s rook was not in a position to stop it queening. Fortunately for him, Tom Townsend overlooked this and the game was drawn, a very good result for Constantin. This gave a final match score of 4-2 to Hammersmith.
Not a bad result given the rating discrepancy, and I imagine we gave plenty of entertainment to the chess.com viewers. However, it’s been quite frustrating this season that we have put up good fights against Hammersmith, Ealing and Maidenhead (away – we beat them at home), but have fallen short in the end. We still have three matches in which to gain the points to stay in division 1.
David Rowson is Kingston B captain in Thames Valley division 1
