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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