A report on our team chess in 2024-25

By Andrew Medworth, Club Captain

Friday 4 July, 2025

The Middlesex League is now complete for the 2024–25 season, so here is my annual round-up of our team chess this year.

We ran five teams in the Middlesex League, up from four last season. Here is a summary of our results:

Full results for every match may be found here.

Our teams in Divisions 2 and 3 had fewer fixtures than the above suggests, as unfortunately Harrow Juniors 1 and 2 did not schedule fixtures with us (or several other clubs); we were awarded 6–0 default wins for all eight matches with these two teams, which skews the results a bit. Ignoring these, our results were as follows:

Participation

Last season there were 48 fixtures in total and 288 team places, so overall our team chess grew by more than a third this year! This was partly because we ran an extra team, and partly because other clubs fielded more teams too, expanding the League.

The Club was represented by 73 different players across the season, up from 67 last season and 62 the season before.

While participation is moving in a very positive direction, we are still not back to the numbers we were seeing before COVID: back then we also ran five teams, but matches were played over eight boards, and we would typically have over 500 team places available per season. In 2018/19, the last complete pre-pandemic season, we were represented by 89 different players.

Hopefully we can keep pushing back towards those levels, and beyond!

Hendon 1

Eric Eedle captained Hendon 1 this year: it’s great to have such an enthusiastic and strong player as our first team captain, so thanks very much Eric!

Division 1 was won by Muswell Hill this year, narrowly on game points from Hammersmith 1 (both 11/14). Congratulations to them! Kings Head 1 (8½/14) and Hackney (7½/14) were the other two teams to finish above us. The teams below us were Albany (5½/14), Ealing (5/14) and Harrow (1½/14).

Hendon 1 had a “season of two halves”. We won five of our first seven matches, including wins at home over Hammersmith and Kings Head, so we can claim to have some effect on the title race! However, after that we won no more matches, only managing draws against Hackney and Kings Head.

It’s hard to know exactly what to put that down to: a few away matches against the tougher sides were in the second half, and a few tight matches didn’t go our way.

Overall, a reasonably satisfactory season, similar to last year, despite the loss of a few key players. Next year will be more of a challenge, with the promotion of West London (see below).

Hendon 2

Hendon 2 was captained by me.

The main story of the season in Division 2 was the runaway success of West London, who won all 14 of their matches and regularly fielded multiple titled players. If they continue fielding such strong sides next season, they will win Division 1 at a canter, pushing everyone else down one place.

Below West London, the margins were very tight. The second promotion place went to Metropolitan on 8/14; then came Hendon 2, Kings Head 2 and Hendon 3 on 7½/14 (who finished in that order on game points, so Hendon 2 came third). The remaining teams were Willesden & Brent (5½/14), Hammersmith 2 (4/14) and Harrow Juniors 1 (2/14).

Hendon 2 also enjoyed better results in the first half of the season than the second, defeating Willesden, Hammersmith 2 and Metropolitan before Christmas, but all the rest of our points came from draws, so if a few half points had landed slightly differently, we could easily have finished much higher or lower.

Hendon 3

Hendon 3 was captained by Sundip Tailor, who did a great job in his first year: thank you very much Sundip!

Hendon 3 was really our new team this year, as we only had one Division 2 side last season.

We debated before the season started whether to enter our new team in Division 2 or Division 3; in the end we decided on the former, as having three Division 3 teams would have meant an extra two internal matches needing to be played by Christmas. The downside was that the new team would face stronger opposition, and we weren’t sure how the squad would hold up.

In the end, Hendon 3 was by far the weakest of our teams relative to the standards of its division: the team was out-rated in almost 90% of games, with an average rating difference of 193 points in our opponents’ favour, which is huge.

Given this, the team scored amazingly well: 20½/56 or 37% in contested games against other clubs, significantly more than the 28% predicted by ratings. These game points were efficiently distributed as well, with a few very heavy losses against West London, Metropolitan and Willesden offset by some good wins including “doing the double” over Hammersmith 2 (which Hendon 2 didn’t manage), and a number of draws as well.

The achievement of finishing on the same match points score as Hendon 2 is really quite a remarkable one under the circumstances, even if luck made a contribution (for example Kings Head 2 defaulted three boards in Hendon 3’s home fixture against them).

Hendon 4

Hendon 4 was captained by our chairman Chris Rogal. Thanks very much Chris!

Division 3 was won by Harrow 2 (11/16), followed by Muswell Hill 2 (10/16) in the second promotion place. The remaining teams above Hendon 4 (8½/16) were Hammersmith 3 (9½/16), Hendon Barnet Knights Juniors (9/16), and Kings Head 3 (9/16). The teams below were Ealing 2 (7½/16), Hammersmith 4 (5½/16) and Harrow Juniors 2 (2/16).

Hendon 4 was our “rotation team”: we deliberately selected players based on fewest matches played in the season to date, to make sure everyone got a chance to play league chess if they wanted it, even if that meant fielding weaker teams than we otherwise might.

Ironically, in spite of this, Hendon 4 was actually the strongest of all our teams relative to its opposition, being out-rated in a mere 57% of games, with an average rating disadvantage of just 57 Elo points. The team still out-performed its ratings, but by a smaller margin than some other teams (48% vs 43% expected).

The team scored some good wins, including a big away win over Division champions Harrow 2 and a double over Hammersmith 4. However the team also suffered four narrow 2½–3½ defeats, so the team was just a few half-points away from a much higher finish.

Hendon Barnet Knights Juniors

Hendon Barnet Knights Juniors was captained by Rob Willmoth, who did a great job, as he has done for many years. Thanks very much Rob!

The Knights scored the most wins of any of our teams, which is why they finished above Hendon 4 in the table.

Juniors are typically considerably stronger than their ratings suggest, so it is not surprising that the Knights significantly out-performed their ratings. They scored 58% in contested games against other clubs (the only one of our teams with a positive score), versus just 38% predicted by ratings.

They scored some great wins as well, including doubles over Hammersmith 3 and Muswell Hill 2.

The team might have done even better, had I not scheduled their away fixture against Ealing so late in the season. Ealing’s club night is a Monday, which clashes with the Barnet Knights club night, and Ealing is one of our most distant venues, so the fact this fixture happened so late when so few players were still eligible to play for the fifth team resulted in a 6–0 default. This is something I will have to bear in mind for next season.

Overall team results

There were no promotions or relegations for any of our teams this season. All finished in mid-table positions.

Focusing on the 58 matches we played against other clubs, we won 22, drew 9 and lost 27, scoring 165/348 game points. Ignoring defaults by ourselves or opponents, we scored 154/327 game points (47%), winning 113, drawing 82, and losing 132. This is significantly better than the 37% which would have been predicted by the Elo ratings.

Our teams are all competitive in their divisions, but none are currently getting anywhere close to promotion. This has been the case for several seasons now. Our opponents are out-rating us in almost 70% of games, and in half of games we are out-rated by at least 105 Elo points.

This isn’t a terrible place to be, and as I said, we are scoring very well given this context, but it would be nice for at least one of our teams to have a serious chance of pushing for something, to liven things up a bit!

This might happen in Division 2 next season, as West London’s promotion should give the other teams a chance of moving up a place: without them, Hendon 2 would have been promoted this year. However, for this to be meaningful, Hendon 1 would need to avoid relegation, which will be more difficult next season with West London moving up.

Another way this might happen is if Hendon 3 gets relegated to Division 3 and gets to aim for promotion the following season.

Individual highlights

Having gone through the team results, I will now highlight some outstanding individual contributions by Hendon players this year.

Firstly, here are the players who played the most matches across the season. Having a reliable set of core players who appear week-in week-out is a major boon for any captain, so many thanks to our stalwarts!

Special thanks to those who played a lot of away matches, which are always the hardest to recruit for. Here are the players with the most away appearances:

Next, I’d like to honour our top scorers. Congratulations to the following players for their crucial contributions!

The remaining rankings are based on measures which are more reliable the more games you play, so I have excluded those who played fewer than three games from the rest of the tables in this section.

Next are the players with the highest percentage scores. The list is topped by Peter Hazell and Michael Paulins, two promising juniors, who scored 5/6, once again highlighting the importance of the Barnet Knights connection. Congratulations!

Next, here are the players with the highest rating performances this season, in other words the players with the best results given the standard of opposition they faced. Very well done!

Finally, I’d like to honour the players who out-performed their ratings by the largest amount this season. This serves as a kind of “most improved player” ranking. The presence of several juniors in this list is no surprise, but there are plenty of adults here too: well done to all!

Away matches

In my report last season I expressed considerable concern about the large difference in strength between our home and away teams, and the difficulties of raising teams for away matches. I therefore felt I should revisit the issue in this report.

First, here are our results against other clubs this season, broken down by venue:

Last season, we scored 81% of our wins, 72% of our match points and 58% of our game points at home. This season, the equivalent figures are 68%, 68% and 58%. Our score in away matches was 8½/29 match points (29%), which is slightly up on 25% last season.

So overall, things were quite a bit more balanced this season. We still scored significantly better at home than away, but that’s always going to be the case to some extent.

This season we were out-rated in 65% of games at home, and 74% of games away. The mean rating difference was 76 points at home and 117 points away (both in our opponents’ favour). Interestingly, our own average home and away ratings were virtually identical overall, so the difference is entirely down to differences in our opponents’ strength.

Breaking that down by team, however, we see that Hendon 1–3 were all substantially stronger at home than away: only Hendon 4 and Hendon Barnet Knights Juniors were stronger away, which is less surprising as factors other than rating go into selecting those teams.

The mean rating differences last season were 82 points at home and 142 points away, so both numbers moved in the right direction this season.

Last season, Hendon 1 had by far the highest difference between home and away ratings in the entire Middlesex League, at 208 points, with the next largest being 143. This season Hendon 1’s difference was just 111 points, and it was not even in the top three on this measure:

Hendon 1 did have a slight drop in average home rating this season (from 2088 to 2042) but we were also much stronger away (1931 this season vs 1880 last). This is thanks to key players like Jonathan Rubeck, Eric Eedle, Gary Senior and Elliott Macneil turning out away from home, and also occasional away appearances by strong players like Lorin D’Costa, Tomer Eden and Rob Willmoth.

Stepping back to look across all our teams, of the 73 players who represented Hendon this season, 53 played at least one away match. That’s 73%, which is up from 67% last season. 33 people played at least two away matches: that’s 45%, up from 39% last year. I’d like those numbers to be even higher, but they are at least moving in the right direction.

On a personal note, I was glad not to be the top player in the Club this season by away appearances! I’m very grateful to everyone who played for us away from home this season. I’m also extremely grateful for the efforts of the captains, who took a lot of the logistical load off my shoulders this year.

Conclusion

Altogether, this was a very positive season for us, with a huge growth of our league presence and much more balanced home and away teams. While we were generally out-rated by our opponents, the difference was less than last season, and we punched well above our weight.

I’m particularly pleased that we were able to introduce three new captains, which significantly spreads the load and improves the sustainability of the Club.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who played for our league teams this season. I hope you enjoyed it! I’d especially like to thank the captains, organisers and other helpers. Without you, we would not be able to play league chess!

See you next season!