2025 Kingston Invitational: Day 4 (Rounds 7 and 8)

John Saunders reports: the fourth day of the 4th Kingston Invitational (15 August 2025) saw the winner of the IM norm event decided as Polish GM Jakub Kosakowski secured a 1½ point lead going into Saturday's final round which means he can no longer be caught. He has 6½/8 and in sole second place is now Spanish IM Ivan Valles Moreno with 5. Sharing third place are South African FM Roland Bezuidenhout and Mexican FM-elect David Maycock Bates on 4½, which means that they are both out of range of IM norms.

Jakub Kosakowski, winner of the 2025 Kingston All-Play-All tournament with a round to spare.

The two Norwegian FMs are dominating the Open Swiss tournament.

FM Gunnar Lund (Norway) leads the Open Swiss on 6½/8 with one round to go.

All-Play-All Tournament, Round 7 (15 August)

Another lively round saw three decisive games, with GM Jakub Kosakowski once again extending his lead over the field to 1½ points. 

The quickest game in terms of moves played was Supratit Banerjee's win with White against Adam A Taylor. Scarcely out of the opening Black blundered away a pawn. Black responded by whipping up a snap attack against castled king. It was quite potent and would surely have downed many a lesser player but not Supratit Banerjee, who found a series of accurate moves to clinch the win. His 21 Bc5 move was very classy.

Supratit Banerjee

Adam A Taylor

GM Jakub Kosakowski restored his substantial lead by defeating fellow Pole FM Liwia Jarocka in 31 moves. The opening was a Giuoco Pianissimo which became less 'piano', when Black changed her mind and captured on e3, thereby opening the game up. White's initial attack was rebuffed but Black failed to find the most solid defence to the second wave.

Jakub Kosakowski vs Liwia Jarocka

Roland Bezuidenhout vs David Maycock Bates started life as a Botvinnik Nimzo-Indian and was fairly level until Black retreated his knight to c8 on move 23. White shaped up to take advantage of this lapse but then unaccountably relocated his bishop to a worse diagonal when he could have applied a strong squeeze. Black then gifted him a promising endgame opportunity but White chose an inferior way of winning a pawn, reaching a rook and pawn ending with only a minimal hope of success. The game went on to 63 moves before a draw was agreed. 

Roland Bezuidenhout vs David Maycock Bates

Ivan Valles Moreno played another non-theoretical queen's pawn opening against Graeme Buckley. The downside of these all-purpose, one-size-fits-all systems is that they lack bite. By move 13 Black had comfortably equalised. White tried to mount some sort of kingside attack but by the time he had got his pieces into position, Black had defended adequately and started to harass his pieces on the queenside. Black won a pawn and then beat off an attack spearheaded by the g-pawn. White gave up two rooks for the queen but the position continued to worsen. Then, just for a fleeting moment, White had a chance to hold but the chance went begging and Black managed to win.

The longest game of the round featured Peter Lalic - a name to strike terror into the hearts of arbiters the length and breadth of London and Surrey, not to mention annotators. And, would you believe it, it happened in the same round of the tournament and the same day of the year as 2024 when he perpetrated his record-breaking 272-move atrocity here in Kingston. However, this year's marathon move-fest was less than half the 2024 record at 131 moves.

Playing through the game I almost fell asleep at move four as the players started with the toothless 1 d4 d5 2 Bf4 Bf5 3 e3 c6 4 Nd2 Nd7. Peter Large, playing White, seemed but a walking shadow of the young firebrand I recall playing for my beloved Mitcham CC 30-40 years ago. "We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Large... that we have... that we have", etc, etc. Large played a weird rook lift to a3 and then across to c3 where it soon got trapped. It looked dreadful and I wouldn't have given tuppence for his chances thereabouts, but Lalic allowed him to shore his position up and he staged an improbable recovery. A whole slew of material then disappeared from the board, leaving White with QB+5P vs QR+2P, which was probably about equal. At move 55 the queens came off and it suddenly became horribly complicated, with White passing up a chance to win, albeit of engine-level difficulty. Later White missed another winning chance before fortune swung round yet again and there were three winning opportunities for Black before the game finally settled into a dead draw around move 76. The subsequent 55 moves were inconsequential. The game went on so long that the start time for the next round had to be set back half an hour.

For the masochists among the readership, here is the score of the game with bare notes.

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All-Play-All Tournament, Round 8 (15 August)

The game between Peter Lalic and Jakub Kosakowski was a Caro-Kann, Advance Variation, and lasted just 15 moves, which probably suited both of them. Peter Lalic had just finished his marathon seventh-round game, for which reason the game had been postponed one hour. For the Polish GM it made fairly sure of his first place in the event as he already had a 1½ point lead.

Adam A Taylor vs Liwia Jarocka started life as an English Opening, but White adopted a rather bizarre strategy which cost him a piece on move 20. It looked hopeless but Black followed it up ineffectively and her advantage dwindled to the point that she was probably glad to agree a draw only nine moves later.

Adam A Taylor v Liwia Jarocka

Peter Large tried a Nimzowitsch Defence (1 e4 Nc6) against Graeme Buckley but White emerged from the opening with a substantial edge. We've seen a number of games in this tournament where the advantage has swing back and forth between the colours but this wasn't one of them. White generated some play on the kingside which wasn't matched by counterplay on the other wing where his opponent's pieces remained cramped and his queen and rook out of play. Soon a pawn fell followed by a general implosion of the white position. A good win for Buckley to reach a 50% score. Large finds himself languishing in last place.

Graeme Buckley vs Peter Large

Supratit Banerjee was well beaten playing White against Roland Bezuidenhout. He countered Black's Sicilian with 3 Bb5 but then seemed to mix systems after developing with 8 Nc3 and 9 d4. The resultant position was rather insipid, allowing Black easy equality, which soon evolved into a positional plus. In desperation White tried 17 Bg5 but it cost him the exchange and two pawns by move 20 and the rest of the game was easy for Black. 

Supratit Banerjee vs Roland Bezuidenhout

David Maycock Bates had a chance of an IM norm if he could score 2/2 but a calamitous loss to the Spanish IM Ivan Valles Moreno put an end to that ambition. Playing White the Mexican FM-elect played a long slab of Ruy Lopez theory with an optimistic 13 g4 at the end of it, where my chosen adjective is probably a euphemism. Valles Moreno countered with an immediate 13...h5 and it was apparent that White was on the defensive from that point forward. However, the lapse wasn't fatal and White gradually fought his way to at least near equality. However, another example of misplaced optimism on move 43 cost him the game.

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2025 Kingston Invitational: Day 3 (Rounds 5 and 6)

John Saunders reports: the third day of the 4th Kingston Invitational (14 August 2025) saw the top seed GM Jakub Kosakowski of Poland increase his lead to one point over his nearest challengers after six rounds have been played. 

Open Swiss (after round 6)

In the Open Swiss, the leader after six of the nine rounds is 15-year-old Jai Kothari (Hampton School & England) who defeated IM Raul Claverie (Argentina)  to move ahead of the two Norwegian FMs, Gunnar Lund and Jacob Templen Grave who drew very quickly with each other, and Michalina Rudzinska (Poland) who defeated Junhao Qian (China).

Jai Kothari (Hampton School, England) leads the Open Swiss after six rounds

IM Norm Tournament, Round 5 (14 August)

The middle round of the nine was perhaps the least eventful so far but still produced two decisive results. Once again we'll look at them in ascending order of moves played.

The game between Roland Bezuidenhout and Peter Lalic was drawn in 16 moves. White's opening play wasn't altogether convincing and Black seemed a bit better when he offered a draw.

Roland Bezuidenhout v Peter Lalic

What, only 16 moves? CM Peter Lalic has reduced the quantity of moves he makes.

IM Ivan Valles Moreno played another undefined queen pawn opening against Liwia Jarocka, as he had done against Peter Large, and for a while it looked like he might enjoy a similar success, particular after he had secured the bishop pair. But for some unknown reason he gave up (or blundered a pawn) after which he had sufficient compensation only for equality and the game was drawn. 

The Spanish IM's no-frills, theory-free style reminds me of the late Gavin Wall who was another IM who scarcely bothered studying opening theory but relied on a limited repertoire of  simple, common sense openings that he had learnt as a youngster and which enabled him to bridge the gap between the unstudied wastes of the opening and the middlegame where he excelled.

Ivan Valles Moreno vs Liwia Jarocka

The game between Supratit Banerjee and Graeme Buckley was quite interesting. The youngster retained his opening edge for quite a while via some careful manoeuvring, but then let things slip slightly around move 28. But that gave him a chance to display the formidable defensive skills he displayed in Liverpool and he found a path to a draw.

Smiles and a handshake to start a well-fought game between Supratit Banerjee and Graeme Buckley

The two longest games of round five were both decisive. Peter Large's loss to Jakub Kosakowski was most unfortunate. The Kingston IM made three big mistakes but only succeeded in escaping the consequences of two of them. The first was when he left a valid claim of a draw by repetition en prise. It's not that his position at the time was that bad - he had reasonable compensation for a pawn - but his next move was the second blunder, allowing Black to exchange queens and reach a comfortably winning endgame. That should have been that, but GM Jakub Kosakowski's handling of the endgame was far from optimal and he allowed Peter Large to claw his way back into the game. At the end a draw was in sight, but Large then blundered a piece in a rather obvious way that could only have been the result of tiredness. As Al Pacino said in one of the Godfather films: "just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"

A pensive Peter Large before the game with...

...Jakub Kosakowski, who increased his lead, though this was not his finest hour.

The game between David Maycock Bates and Adam A Taylor lasted 85 moves. The opening was a Kalashnikov Sicilian, which is a hard opening to understand at the best of times. The game was a long rambling brawl which neither player managed to get under control for long. Or, as I wrote in the notes, more like roulette than chess. Choose whichever metaphor you think works best, or come up with one of your own. After a long struggle Black just managed to exchange sufficient material to be able to quell White's resistance and exploit the material that White had gambled.

David Maycock Bates (White) vs Adam A Taylor

IM Norm Tournament, Round 6 (14 August)

As the tournament progresses and the sweltering weather continues, the players are starting to wilt slightly under the pressure. The tournament leader, GM Jakub Kosakowski, had stretched his lead to 1½ points after his win in the morning so it was hardly surprising that he decided to award himself the afternoon off with a 15-move draw against Adam A Taylor, who had just played an 85-move marathon, necessitating a delayed start to the game. I append the bare score for interest: I couldn't think of anything to say about it.

Liwia Jarocka vs Peter Large opened with a Richter Sicilian, with Black running into a dangerous kingside offensive around move 13. It might have been more deadly had White kept the attack rolling but some defensive moves allowed Black to counter effectively.

Liwia Jarocka vs Peter Large

Graeme Buckley played a Moscow Variation against Roland Bezuidenhout's Sicilian. White launched f and g-pawns forward, with the apparent approval of Stockfish, but it soon turned into a fiasco when the white king was left without adequate pawn cover and at the mercy of Black's counterattacking force. It just goes to show that computer ideas don't always suit human chess.

Graeme Buckley vs Roland Bezuidenhout

Peter Lalic had White against Ivan Valles Moreno, who produced another of his homemade opening specialities, based around the Modern Defence. This all-purpose defence to whatever White plays is of course a great favourite with theory-dodgers such as myself, as well as real players such as David Norwood. Once again I was reminded of Gavin Wall who also didn't allow anything so tiresome as opening theory to get between him and playing good chess. Having Ivan (almost an anagram of Gavin?) doing his stuff is like having Gavin in the room.

Ivan Valles Moreno

After a fairly cagey start, the game caught fire when White opted to grab a pawn which he was then invited to garnish with an exchange. This involved a radical imbalance of the position as regards the pawns, with White having a preponderance on the kingside but Black having a still more impressive majority on the queenside. Once again, as with the Buckley-Bezoudenhout game, Stockfish supported White's plan. One of the big problems with engine suggestions is that they are often harder to follow up with easily discoverable human moves and rely on a long sequence of moves that no human could ever find to make them work. (It also means that auto-annotations are often complete garbage.) What is nectar to Stockfish can be poison for a human. I have to say that the engine had a really bad day at the office today. In the tournament room there is no substitute for human ingenuity and creativity. No criticism of Peter Lalic, of course: he made a couple of decisions that looked reasonable at the time but simply didn't work out in practice. But hats off to Ivan Valles Moreno for an ingenious display of practical, engine-defying chess. Do play through the game and marvel at Black's queenside rabble storming the white palace.

Peter Lalic

Now to the final game of the round, between David Maycock Bates and Supratit Banerjee. It reinforced the image of David Maycock Bates as a chess gambler, and Supratit Banerjee as an ingenious defender. I'm not sure a conventional annotation of such a game fits the bill. The position opened up and it became next to impossible for the players to maintain a good level of accuracy. One would be for ever pointing out moves that had tactical flaws (much as those awful auto-annotation facilities do) but this misses the point that players who play in this style know full well that neither they nor their opponents have much chance of stringing together an immaculate series of accurate moves or controlling the position. They stir up a maelstrom and trust to their intuition that enough of their moves work in their favour for them to emerge with the point. For that reason I have toned down the recital of errors, just picking out a handful where the players might have been expected to do better, or where the engine found something striking, albeit not humanly possible.

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2025 Kingston Invitational: Day 2, Rounds 3 and 4

John Saunders reports: the second day of the 2025 Kingston Invitational Chess Tournament (13 August) featured rounds three and four and a change of venue for the round-robin IM norm event. Not too much travel was involved: the ten players of the round-robin, plus a few of the top boards from the Swiss event moved to an adjacent room to share the space occupied by the rest of the Swiss tournament participants. 

"It Ain't Half Hot, Mum!"

The reason for the move was the lack of air conditioning in the smaller room where the oppressive heat had become intolerable during round two on Tuesday. Electric fans had been provided but they simply could cope with the level of heat. Overseas readers of this blog who have never visited this Sceptred Isle and who entertain stereotypical notions of Britain as a country where it is cold and rains all the time may be surprised to learn that we have suffered three or four heatwaves since April this year. I'm not claiming the UK is a sun-kissed tropical paradise (lest I sound like a latter-day Alan Whicker) but neither is it all umbrellas and raincoats in these parts. Having refuted one British stereotype, I now realise I've only managed to reinforce another - yes, we do like talking about the weather.

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Day 2 (13 August 2025)

After four rounds of the all-play-all IM norm event, GM Jakub Kosakowski (Poland) retains the lead with 3½/4, followed by Mexican/Kingstonian CM David Maycock Bates on 3, with the strong likelihood that he has qualified for the FM title. Also on a plus score are IM Ivan Valles Moreno of Spain and FM Supratit Banerjee of England. 

Meanwhile, the open tournament is looking rather more Norwegian than Swiss, with FM Gunnar Lund (Norway) leading on 3½/4 and no fewer than eight players on 3 points, including his compatriot FM Jacob Templen Grave, two titled female players, WGM Michalina Rudzinska (Poland) and WFM Luisa Bashylina (Germany), plus three under-18 English players making an early bid for the Barden Cup: Shlok Verma, Jai Kothari and Shivam Agrawal.

Round Robin, Round 3

The round three all-play-all contingent, now located alongside the cool as a mountain stream Swiss competitors, still managed to produce some red-hot chess. Graeme Buckley, as anybody who has ever read my ravings utterances in previous posts will know, is a particular favourite of mine as he never plays a boring game. The game he played in this round certainly lived up to that billing, but sadly for Graeme it was his opponent, Adam A Taylor, who enjoyed most of the excitement. (Incidentally, I have to refer to him using his middle initial as there is a second English player of his forename and surname, Adam C Taylor, who is a year younger and an IM.) Buckley launched a kingside pawn advance but it soon ran out of steam and left his king dangerously exposed. The way Taylor turned the tables and then won with a series of deadly pins was definitely not boring.

Definitely not boring: Graeme Buckley vs Adam A Taylor

The game between David Maycock and Peter Lalic started with a Petroff, which doesn't always augur well for an interesting game. But these local stars know each other well and are usually in the mood for a fight. On move 10 Peter Lalic decided to take a risk and launch his knight into the white camp. It resolved into a relatively simple position where White had an extra pawn but Black had a degree of compensation for it. Then, out of the blue, Black inexplicably blundered in a none too complicated position and White had a simple task to convert.

Peter Lalic

David Maycock Bates

The 28-year-old South African FM Roland Bezuidenhout had the white pieces against tournament leader GM Jakub Kosakowski. He chose the Exchange QGD which is regarded as one of the most solid lines for White. The players journeyed down a sideline until move 13 when White suddenly allowed Black to capture a pawn with check. It didn't look like a blunder, more a piece of home prep, as it set up threats to the black king along the e-file. Stockfish believed it anyway, which is perhaps a sign of preparation. Black decided to return the pawn in due course and a peace treaty was signed on move 19.

The battle of the Spanish and English IMs, Ivan Valles Moreno vs Peter Large, opened with a fairly innocuous queen's pawn opening which HIARCS Chess Explorer identifies as the Yusupov-Rubinstein System. It reminded me of the sort of all-purpose, non-theoretical opening that my Spanish blitz opponents used to trot out against me in my favourite chess-playing bar in Barcelona in the mid-1970s. They may not have known much theory and some of them had probably never read a chess book in their lives, but those guys could play up a storm at blitz. (Ivan Valles Moreno wouldn't have been one of them as he was only just born around that time. I'm so old!)

IM Peter Large (England)

IM Ivan Valles Moreno (Spain)

There was a moment in the opening where Large could have snaffled a centre pawn but he wasn't tempted. I'm not at all sure why. But a move or two later he was tempted to take a proffered c-pawn. This one did look a bit iffy as he hadn't yet completed development by castling. He opted to sacrifice the exchange for a pawn, but the analysis engine wasn't convinced. Black strove to keep the queens on but his position only worsened in the attempt. When a pawn fell, he gave up the struggle.

The longest game of the round was FM Supratit Banerjee (England) vs FM Liwia Jarocka (Poland). As you can see from the photos, Supratit likes to shut his eyes for a moment of meditation before the game, in contrast to Liwia who gives the photographer a smile. (I am reminded of Czech GM David Navara who always turns a beatific smile to the photographer when a lens is pointed at him.) The youngster, playing the white side of an Open Ruy Lopez, seemed to deviate from known paths with a rook lift to e3 followed by a dog-leg to c3 where it threatened two undefended knights on the file. The threat was easily parried but Black failed to take advantage of the tempo gained and White regained the initiative. Having won Black's d-pawn it seemed probably that Supratit would win but a serious strategical mistake, liquidating when it was necessary to keep the heavy pieces on the board, cost him dear. He continued to test his opponent for many moves but his Polish adversary passed the endgame examination with flying colours to draw.

FM Liwia Jarocka (Poland) - eyes open, smiling

FM Supratit Banerjee (England) - eyes closed, meditating

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Round 4 (13 August 2025)

The afternoon session resembled rounds one and two in that just one of the five all-play-all games resulted in a draw. There were two draws in round three, which is still not a bad proportion, so organiser Stephen Moss can be well pleased and congratulate himself on a shrewd selection of participants.

Round 4 in progress

Let's tackle the five games in ascending numbers of moves played, which I assume broadly corresponds to the elapsed time taken. The draw was between Liwia Jarocka and Roland Bezuidenhout, the game being over in 18 moves. The South African FM defended the French Defence, Fort Knox variation, named after the ultra-impregnable US Army installation in Kentucky. Suffice to say that the game lived up to the defence's reputation and a draw agreed.

The game between the leader Polish GM Jakub Kosakowski and Spanish IM Ivan Valles Moreno lasted only four moves longer than the above game but the second half was devastating. Black tried to duck and dive with an offbeat opening but a powerful combination punch, first on the kingside and then on the queenside, left him sprawling on the canvas. The game read like a  warning to the other competitors. Anyone else thinking to bamboozle the Polish pugilist with a silly opening needs to think again as he doesn't stand for any nonsense.

Jakub Kosakowski (White) vs Ivan Valles Moreno

Adam A Taylor crowned a fine day's work by downing his second IM, while, for his victim, Peter Large, it was a doleful day's double bagel with Black. The opening was a sort of English vs Dutch set-up of which I'm almost entirely ignorant so I shall skip quickly to a discussion of the middlegame. Black found himself severely cramped by White's centre pawns on d5 and d5 and attempted to counter this by advancing his f and g pawns towards the white king. It necessitated sacrificing the exchange, which failed to impress Stockfish or the opponent. Altogether a bad day at the office for Kingston CC's IM.

Supratit Banerjee chose a Caro Kann Defence against Peter Lalic, who went in for an Advanced Variation, with the maximum number of pawn pushes on the kingside. As a former Caro-Kann-ist myself, I can vouch for the scariness of this line. After 11 moves Supratit abandoned his h-pawn to its fate but Peter Lalic chose not to accept the sacrifice. The proverb "he who hesitates is lost" was the story of this game. White had a couple of opportunities to get the better of the opening but a few sub-optimal moves suddenly left his position in ruins and the youngster finished off the game without difficulty.

Supratit Banerjee is very calm and correct at the board. Here's a sample of his facial expressions taken within seconds of each other. I'm not sure my attempts to 'read' him are valid - maybe the reader can do better...

... thinking...

... assessing the opposition...

... calculating...

... calculating something particularly cunning? Or just double-checking his analysis?

Graeme Buckley's day consisted of two games with the white pieces. Like Peter Large, he ended it with 0/2 but he didn't have Peter's excuse of being Black. For his afternoon opponent, David Maycock Bates, it was joy unconfined as the day's brace of wins versus stepson Lalic and stepfather Buckley took him above the 2300 rating threshold for the award of the FIDE Master title (subject to confirmation). Well done, that young man. 

The game was a Closed Ruy Lopez. Though it remained theoretical for some time, I found the line Buckley chose to follow to be hard to understand, first lining up queen and bishop on the a2-g8 diagonal which he then blocked with d5. Cue for a Fred Trueman interjection: "I don't know what's goin' off out there!" Buckley sacrificed a pawn for negligible compensation and, although it was hard for Black to effect a decisive breakthrough to exploit his material, White spent the rest of the game committed to grim defence. A final throw of the dice by Maycock decided matters. The last congratulatory word must go to Kingston CC member David Maycock Bates who got the job done efficiently.

A contrast in fortune: bad day at the office for Buckley, an FM title achieved for Maycock

Kingston Open Tournament: Leader Board

FM Gunnar Lund (Norway) leads the Open with 3½/4.

WFM Luisa Bashylina (Germany) defeated round 3 leader Ewan Wilson (England)

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