A report on our team chess in 2023/24

By Andrew Medworth, Hendon Club Captain

Sunday 21 July, 2024

The Middlesex League’s 2023/24 season is now complete, so it’s time for my annual Club Captain’s round-up.

As usual, the vast majority of our team chess was played in the Middlesex League, so this will be the focus of my report. We ran four teams in the League this season: Hendon 1, 2, and 3 (captained by me) and our junior team Hendon Barnet Knights (captained by Rob Willmoth).

As last year, Hendon 1 and 2 were selected on the basis of playing strength, while Hendon 3 was selected on a rotation basis (I tried to prefer players who had played the fewest matches in the season to date, with rating a secondary consideration). Hendon Barnet Knights was selected on a junior-preference basis, with adults filling in where necessary.

The teams were spread throughout all three divisions. Here is a summary of their results:

Full results for every match may be found here.

Hendon teams played a total of 46 matches this season (Hendon 3 and Hendon Barnet Knights having played each other twice in Division 3), with a total of 288 team places available. This is a slight increase on last season, because Division 3 had seven teams rather than last season’s six; however, it is still well down on pre-COVID levels, when there were five Hendon teams and matches were played over eight boards rather than six.

In total, Hendon was represented by 67 players this season (of which 50 played at least one match for Hendon 1–3, the other 17 playing exclusively for Hendon Barnet Knights). I’m pleased to report this is slightly up on last season, where 62 players represented the club, and 44 the non-junior teams.

I’d like to thank everyone who played for us in the league this season! I’m delighted to say we saw a very low rate of defaults this year, defaulting just two boards all season, and just one default by our opponents. This is a tribute to the effort everyone has put in to keep their commitments to play in our matches, which I really appreciate.

I’d also like to thank my fellow captain Rob Willmoth, and everyone who filled in for either one of us as an on-the-night captain. For Hendon 1–3, the stand-in captains were Chris Rogal, Domenico Napolitano, Alex Funk, Nick Murphy, Philippe Gelin and David Lewis; for Hendon Barnet Knights, I know Jake Hung did this on several occasions, and there may have been others. It’s impossible for Rob and me to attend every single match, so having people to back us up and look after individual matches is absolutely vital!

Hendon 1

Hendon 1 finished fifth of seven teams in Division 1, behind Hackney, Muswell Hill 1, Kings Head 1 and Albany, and ahead of Ealing and Kings Head 2.

The main characteristic of Hendon 1’s season was a huge difference between the strength of our home and away teams. Our four strongest players, and the only Hendon 1 players rated above 2000, were IM Lorin D’Costa, FM John Richardson, CM Rob Willmoth and Gary Senior. These four played a total of 17 games at home, but just 6 away (of which 4 were played by Gary Senior).

Unsurprisingly, this led to a huge difference in results. At home, our team was highly competitive: we lost just one match to Kings Head 1, and we even tied with division winners Hackney, who only dropped 1½ match points all season. Away from home, however, we were often significantly outrated. Our away fixture against Kings Head 1 was a particular lowlight, with our Board 1 rated 160 points lower than their Board 6!

A significant contributing factor to this was the fact that no other Division 1 club this season had a Thursday club night, and three (Albany, Ealing and Kings Head) had Monday club nights. Several of our stronger players have other commitments on weekdays other than Thursday, and Monday is a particular problem because it is the Barnet Knights club night. I shall have more to say about “the away match problem” below.

Overall, however, we can’t be too dissatisfied, as we exceeded our match points total from last season (where we scored 4½) and comfortably avoided relegation.

Hendon 2

Hendon 2 finished fourth of seven teams in Division 2, behind Hammersmith 1, Harrow 1 and Metropolitan, and ahead of Harrow Juniors 1 and Hammersmith 2 (who also scored 5/12 match points but scored fewer game points than us) and Muswell Hill 2.

Hendon 2 had a “season of two halves”, with 3½ match points from their first six matches and just 1½ from their last six. The team opened the season with two home wins, at a stage where we still had Jonathan Rubeck, Eric Eedle and David Amior available to us; these match points proved vital. Later in the season, the combination of fewer players being eligible for the team and a difficult set of away fixtures took its toll on our results.

However, the team finished the season finished strongly, with a win at home against the champions Hammersmith 1, who won all 11 of their other matches this season!

Hendon 3

Hendon 3 finished fourth of seven teams in Division 3, behind Hammersmith 3, Willesden & Brent and Hendon Barnet Knights (who also scored 5½ match points but beat Hendon 3 on game points), and head of Harrow Juniors 2, Kings Head 3 and Harrow 2.

With Hendon 3, we focus on rotation rather than results, so the team was represented by a much wider diversity of players than our other teams. Given this, they scored no worse than our other teams, which is very creditable; one wonders what we might have been able to achieve with more strength-oriented team selection.

Hendon 3 achieved a couple of superb match draws away from home, which played a crucial role in determining the Division 3 title. We held Hammersmith 3 to a draw at the MindSports Centre; Hammersmith 3 only dropped 1½ match points all season, so that result was quite special. However, we made it up to them by holding their rivals Willesden & Brent to a draw at their home venue; Willesden & Brent only dropped 2 match points all season, so Hammersmith 3 ended up winning the division by just half a match point!

Hendon Barnet Knights

Hendon Barnet Knights finished third of seven teams in Division 3, behind only Hammersmith 3 and Willesden & Brent, though the gulf between second and third place was quite large, with Willesden & Brent scoring 10/12 and Hendon Barnet Knights 5½!

Special mention must go to Peter Hazell, who scored an excellent 5½/7 for the team with a rating performance of 1941, including several wins against 1700-rated opponents and even one against a player rated 1846!

Individual results

I’d now like to celebrate our top individual contributions, starting with most overall appearances:

Many thanks to our top stalwarts! Having players willing to turn out for the team week-in week-out is incredibly helpful to any captain.

Now, moving on to our top overall scorers:

And our top scorers in relative terms (highest percentage score with 3 or more games played):

Here are the highest rating performances in the club over the season (excluding players who played fewer than three games, or scored 100% or 0%):

Special mention must go to Eric Eedle, who had a superb season, with the best performance in the club, both in terms of absolute score, percentage score and rating performance! It is wonderful to see Eric’s continued development.

Finally, I want to highlight the players whose rating performance exceeded their actual rating by the largest margin (again excluding those who played fewer than three games). This can be thought of as a simple “most improved player” ranking. It is unsurprising to see there are several rapidly-developing junior players on this list, but there are plenty of adults as well – congratulations to all!

Away matches

One of the major themes of this season was the difficulties we had raising teams for our away matches.

Away matches are always a challenge for any league captain: they typically require less convenient travel arrangements for players, and often take place on weeknights other than Thursdays when many members have other recurring commitments. This means it is almost always much more difficult to put a team together for away matches than home.

We are fortunate to have a lot of junior players, whose parents are understandably concerned to make sure they get enough sleep to be ready for school the next day. Among our higher-rated players we have several involved in junior coaching, which means they are almost always unavailable for matches on several days of the week. Other members may have personal reasons, such as health issues, which make it difficult for them to play away.

As a captain, it is not my place to judge the personal priorities of our members, and I am obviously not entitled to demand people prioritise our league teams over other important things in their lives, such as education, paid work, family or health. We do not want to turn people away from our club just because they are only available for chess on Thursdays, or because they live in an area with poor public transport links to other Middlesex League venues.

However, in order for the Club to be able to run any given number of league teams, we do need enough people willing to play in the away matches. Collectively speaking, we cannot expect other clubs to come to us if we are not willing to go to them.

This has always been a challenge to some extent: I cannot pretend there was ever a golden age where we found it easy to raise away teams. However, this season, the demand for home and away matches felt particularly unbalanced: I would often have two or even more players available for every team place at home, but struggled to get a full team together for certain away matches, especially for Hendon 1 and 2 at the venues like Ealing and Hammersmith which are further from us.

I would typically send availability requests to at least 30–40 players for each match, but on several occasions I did not get the 6 positive replies I needed; we avoided defaults in these matches only because I contacted people individually by phone or WhatsApp, to try to persuade them to play. Several times I had to offer players a lift in my car, making several stops along the way in both directions, when I would generally prefer to take public transport.

The stresses of captaincy also tend to be greater for away matches: both of our two defaults in the league this season came away from home, and it is not uncommon for players to arrive late without much advance warning, because of transport problems and/or unfamiliarity with the venue.

In the end, I was able to raise a full team for every match (a couple of no-shows notwithstanding). However, those teams tended to be significantly lower-rated than our home teams: this led to a lot of away matches where we faced much higher-rated opposition.

Adding all these factors together, this season has been the most difficult I can remember from a personal point of view. I played in 8 away matches, more than anyone else at the Club, and just 2 home matches. I was out-rated by over 200 points on average, scored just 2/10, and was only on the winning team once all season, in the internal match between Hendon 3 and Hendon Barnet Knights on 28th September.

I don’t mind playing stronger players as a general rule, but to enjoy this I need to feel I am playing to the best of my ability, and to enjoy at least an occasional success. This season that simply did not happen for me. I did not really enjoy my chess this year, and I feel I sacrificed too much, both on and off the board, to make these away matches happen.

I would not be surprised if other away players felt similarly. It’s never pleasant when you can’t get in the team for home matches, because stronger players are being picked ahead of you, and you only get picked for away matches where you suffer a long journey only to get beaten easily by a much stronger player and then have a long journey home again.

Before I discuss the path forward, I will present some statistics to back up my narrative. Note that matches between teams from the same club (e.g. between Hendon 3 and Hendon Barnet Knights) are excluded from the following tables unless otherwise stated.

Firstly, here are our match results broken down by venue:

So while only half our matches were played at home, we scored 81% of our wins, 72% of our match points and 58% of our game points there.

Our score of 5½/22 away from home was actually slightly better than last season, where we scored just 3½/22, but this was because we managed to scrape a few more match draws this year: in both seasons we scored just 3 away wins across all our teams. This season we slightly outperformed away from home (actual score 41% vs 34% predicted by ratings) whereas last season we slightly underperformed (37% actual vs 43% predicted).

The next table shows the rating differences between our teams and their opponents, home and away:

This shows that Hendon 1 players in away matches faced opponents on average 173 rating points stronger, and 201 points for Hendon 2. In 2022/23, these numbers were just 57 and 86 points respectively, so this season’s numbers were 2–3 times worse.

This is a hugely impactful change: a rating advantage of 173 points maps to a 73% expected score in the Elo model, whereas a 57-point advantage maps to just 58%. 57 points is a slight advantage; 173 is a significant gulf in class.

We are not the only club with this problem, but we are one of the worst affected. The following is a table of the top 10 teams, across all three divisions of the Middlesex League, ordered by average home minus average away rating:

So Hendon 1 was by far the worst in the league on this measure, with a home-away difference almost twice that of the next worst team, and Hendon 2 coming in third.

These numbers are again significantly worse than last season: in 2022/23, Hendon 1 was still top of this table, but the difference was just 114 points, largely thanks to a higher average away rating (1973), and Hendon 2 was in sixth place with a difference of just 27 points.

Here are some statistics on the number of different players who represented each of our teams, home and away, in matches against other clubs:

So of the 67 players who played for Hendon teams this season, only 45 (67%) played any away matches at all, and just 26 (39%) played more than one away match. In 2022/23, those numbers were 80% and 45% respectively.

This season, as part of my ongoing efforts (which go well beyond my role as Club Captain) to computerise and modernise the operations of the club, I automated the sending of individualised match invitations to each member for Hendon 1–3 matches, and the collection of the responses. This gives us, for the first time, comprehensive data on response rates.

The following graph shows how many positive responses we got to our match invitations, per place available, broken down by team and venue:

As you can see, the home availability rates are significantly higher than the away ones for all teams, with multiple matches for Hendon 1 and 2 falling below the one player per place needed to form a full team.

Before I turn my attention to how we should respond to this problem next season, I would like to thank everyone who played for Hendon away this season, particularly our top 10 (home figures below include internal matches). The club owes you a great debt of gratitude.

Next season

The imbalance in demand for home and away matches leaves us with something of a dilemma. Looking at our home matches alone, it would appear we need at least one more team, if not two; however, looking at the away matches, we can barely run the teams we have now.

One simple idea would be to tweak our selection policy for Hendon 3, to count home and away matches separately (i.e. for home matches, we select those who have played the fewest home matches to date, and similarly for away matches). This would at least mean that playing away would not penalise you for Hendon 3 home selection. I certainly intend to do this, but it would make only a marginal difference: there are only seven Hendon 3 home matches per season in the first place.

In early May, I was so concerned about “the away match problem” that I wrote to all our members about it. I received a number of supportive responses from across the club, for which I’m very grateful. In my email I mentioned a few possible ways forward:

• Find some way to increase the number of members willing to play away matches, especially those with higher ratings. For example, perhaps recruiting more captains, who could put more effort into team-building and generating an atmosphere of camaraderie for their individual teams, might help. Our junior team, Hendon Barnet Knights, was on average stronger away than at home, so clearly it can be done!
• Try to make the strengths of our home and away teams more similar. Even if we can’t make our away teams stronger, we could easily make our home teams weaker, by prioritising players for home match selection who are also making themselves available to play away, even if they are lower-rated. Then, if our teams cannot remain competitive in their current divisions, relegation should enable them to find a more suitable level over time. Personally, I would be very much against this option, because it would harm our inclusivity.
• Reduce the number of teams we enter into the Middlesex League, and use the freed-up time for other activities. For example:
  • There are a number of other chess leagues in our area, including the London League, the North Circular League, the Thames Valley League, the Central London League, and the Hillingdon League. Unfortunately, I see no reason to think that any of these would solve our problem, as all would involve playing significant numbers of away matches, across geographical areas even larger and less convenient for us than the Middlesex League.
  • We could play more friendly matches against clubs with closer venues, such as Muswell Hill or Willesden & Brent. Friendlies have the advantage of a flexible board count, allowing us to grow or shrink matches to accommodate whoever is available. However, even here there is no guarantee of success: I tried to organise a pair of under-1800 friendlies against Muswell Hill this season, and while we took a team of 10 to the away fixture, Muswell Hill were unable to find a single player willing to play in the return match at Hendon!
  • We could try to organise an internal team competition, dividing the club into small teams, and playing a series of internal matches, say over four boards, throughout the season.
  • We could organise more individual internal competitions, such as long versions of our Club Championship. I believe this is a tradition in many chess clubs in continental Europe.

I think it would be a great shame to stop participating in home/away leagues altogether: these are a unique opportunity to visit other London chess clubs, and build a wider chess community in the city. Personally, I quite enjoy playing away matches when the conditions are right. However, reducing our participation – say to three teams instead of four – in favour of other activities is definitely an option.

On the other hand, if we can get enough captains willing to take on the challenges of building teams that can compete both home and away, increasing our number of teams is also an option.

Whenever I don’t select someone for a home match, I always offer to organise a rated friendly for them at the same time limit. Despite the large surplus of volunteers we are currently seeing for home matches, I am very rarely taken up on this offer. This suggests that members value match play. However, it’s possible that having the game contribute towards a broader individual competition, such as a tournament, would also be satisfactory.

It boils down to what our members want from us as a club. I look forward to a more in-depth discussion about this at our AGM on 8th August.

One thing is for sure, though: I won’t be captaining three teams next season. Not only is this too great a burden for me, I don’t think it’s in the interests of the club either. While we have had a number of people take on the “on-the-night” duties of a captain (and I have written a guide to this), we also need to develop a broader base of people who can do the full job, including the advance organisation.

Therefore, my intention is to captain just one team in 2024/25. The total number of teams we run next season will depend on the number of other captains we can find. Any new captains will still be able to use the software I have built, but will hopefully bring their own energy and ideas to the role.

With that, I will bring this report to a close, with thanks once again to everyone who helped our teams in 2023/24.

Andrew Medworth
Hendon Club Captain