With a comfortable 5½-2½ home win against visitors Enfield, our 2nd team clinched promotion back to the 2nd Division of the Middlesex League with a couple of matches to spare! With 5½/6 match points, we re-took the lead in the 3rd Division from Harrrow 1, who also recently secured promotion.
| Hendon 2 | Hendon 2 | Enfield 1 | Enfield 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bennett, Michael K | 170 | 0 - 1 | Thethi, Pritpal S | 180 | ||
| 2 | Iwi, David | 162 | 1 - 0 | Kyriacou, Kyriacos | 145 | ||
| 3 | Pepe, Salvatore | 159 | 1 - 0 | Efthymiou, Demetris | 142 | ||
| 4 | Jones, Chris S | 151 | 0 - 1 | McNish, David | 136 | ||
| 5 | Limonov, Petr | 144 | 1 - 0 | Dover, Robert | 132 | ||
| 6 | Jones, David | 144 | ½ - ½ | Clarke, Anthony J | 121 | ||
| 7 | Rogal, Chris | 143 | 1 - 0 | Nicholas, Paul | 121 | ||
| 8 | Lennard, Graeme | 120 | 1 - 0 | Banks, Stephen | 113 | ||
| 5½ - 2½ | |||||||
Mini-Report by Adam Raoof
So: going into this match Mike and Chris had done the maths and knew we needed a draw to guarantee promotion back into the second division. Enfield, however, can field a pretty strong team on a good day with the wind behind them. It was a relief therefore when Captain Steve sailed in and announced “we’ve got a weak team tonight”!
In practice it was not so easy. Chris J, celebrating his 50th birthday that day, lost a hard game against a Golders Green veteran. Then we had a solid draw from David Jones, and Chris R squeezed a win to level the match – good one, Captain!
Opinions were divided on the state of the match at that point. I thought it was gradually going our way, but I was mindful of the clock situation on Petr’s board (as usual: dire) and David Iwi’s board (level ending, refused a draw offer, heading into a time scramble). Mike was doing a magnificent job of disguising his material deficit in an endgame but it looked like his 180 (ex 190+) opponent was determined to try to win. In fact all the games were going the full distance!
Petr snapped up a loose piece. Salvatore too, with a neat tactic. David won an assured rook and pawn ending. Graeme ended all resistance with a crushing breakthrough in a Dutch Stonewall blocked position. The match was ours!
Now we need to get together a third team for next season!
Note: U = adjournment