Our 1st team leapfrogged Muswell Hill to move into 2nd place in Division 1 of the Middlesex League, with a comfortable away win against Hammersmith.
| Hammersmith 1 | Hammersmith 1 | Hendon 1 | Hendon 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kelmendi, Bajrush | 186 | 0 - 1 | Mures, Cristian | 199 | ||
| 2 | Price, Michael C | 157 | 0 - 1 | Senior, Gary | 199 | ||
| 3 | Collard, Amel | 151 | 0 - 1 | Eden, Tomer | 195 | ||
| 4 | Mabud, Sheikh A | 149 | 0 - 1 | Raoof, Adam N | 185 | ||
| 5 | Woolley, John H | 149 | 0 - 1 | Ellis, Daniel | 179 | ||
| 6 | Birhane, Dawit | 145 | 0 - 1 | du Buf, Paul | - | ||
| 7 | DEFAULT | - | 0 - 1 | Bennett, Michael K | 170 | ||
| 8 | Chrabaszcz, Mariusz | - | 1 - 0 | Bigio, Jacob | - | ||
| 1 - 7 | |||||||
Match Report by Adam Raoof
With this victory our 1st team leapfrogged Muswell Hill to move into 2nd place in Division 1 of the Middlesex League. It appears from the scores to have been quite a comfortable win, but as usual that belies the fierce over the board struggles that had to take place first!
Tomer in particular was the beneficiary of a few poor moves from his opponent who had, until then, played like a 190 to achieve a very good position. Swapping into a lost endgame was not the best choice he could have made, and Tomer pounced on the opportunity like a true Lion!
Gary had to play black… again… but rose to the challenge bravely with a perfect white square invasion of his opponent’s position in his pet line of the Sicilian.
Adam continued his excellent performance this season with another smooth win, gradually outplaying his opponent in positional style.
Dan shocked us by playing a super solid line of the Spanish to torture his cautious opponent, and gradually outplayed him.
Credit to Jacob for turning out in his very first match for us, and being almost the last to finish! We felt he missed some swindling chances in the end, but objectively he was lost, having dropped 2 queenside pawns on the black side of a QGD, and then going a rook down. His opponent was pretty good.
Cristian’s game was instructive and featured a neat use of the knights!
Unusually Paul had to play the whole session to finish his game. His opponent was familiar to us, and we knew he was dangerous in a tactical melee, but as both players offered material in order to wrestle the initiative, Paul’s ability and experience told. Finally he won an exchange and used his rooks to corner the enemy king and mate.
Mike finished first – his opponent turned up 15 minutes after the default time! That gave MKB the opportunity to use his Reiki Master skills on the rest of the team and work his magic.