Kingston B v Surbiton A, Thames Valley League division 1 match played at the Richard Mayo Centre, United Reformed Church, Kingston on 9 March 2026

It’s sometimes said that relegation battles are not for the purist;  I think the course of this match supports that view. The key point is not how you play, but whether you get the required result, and in the end this was what Kingston B achieved against Surbiton A. Two short draws, one longer one, a game that saw an unlikely turn-around, a game decided by a blunder, and my own game, about which the least said the better (though the reader will see below that I have said quite a lot).

The first game to finish was the board 5 encounter. It began as a c3 Sicilian Defence, but after the queens were exchanged the players decided there was little to be gained from playing on and agreed a draw. Following this, another draw, on board 2. As Peter Andrews pointed out, the drama here was only in what might have been. In the following position Black played 17…f6, but Peter noted that “Black was struggling for a plan here, and missed a nice pawn sacrifice pointed out by the machine: 17…. h5.” The analysis below shows what follows if White accepts the pawn sac.

This was also the result on board 3, but only after more than 40 moves. From a kind of Catalan Opening, numerous exchanges led to an ending in which Jasper Tambini (foreground, left, in photograph above), with Black, had a bishop against Neil Davies’s knight but ultimately could not make progress.

So three peaceful conclusions left the match all square, but the remaining games were much more contested. Martyn Jones, playing White, and David Cole dared to explore the complications and imbalances of the Winawer variation of the French Defence. As can happen in this opening, White’s queen hoovered up Black’s kingside pawns, but allowed Black to take his central pawns in return. The position here is unbalanced but roughly equal:

Martyn’s win put Kingston one game ahead, but the signs for the overall result were not promising as I was struggling to defend an inferior ending on board 1 and Stephen Lovell was the exchange and a pawn down on board 4.

Stephen had played the English Opening, but commented: “My opponent played a system I hadn’t encountered before, and I didn’t find the best way of meeting it.” This was the position after Nick Faulks had shored up his queenside by moving the a8 rook off the long diagonal and his pawn to b6 and taken a grip on the centre:

Due to the players’ shortage of time, the record of the moves ends in the position above, but this was the key result for Kingston B, as it ensured that we would win the match and made the result of my own game incidental.

As Black in another English Opening I had obtained what I thought were promising chances, but accepted exchanges which eventually resulted in a fairly level position:

My dissatisfaction with the way my game had gone was offset by the fact that we had won the match, an important step towards possible safety from relegation in Thames Valley division 1. I’ll take another few chaotic encounters like this if we can get the results we need.

David Rowson is Kingston B captain in Thames Valley League division 1