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
Round 4 (13 August 2025)
Round 4 in progress
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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