Thursday saw the final home league match of the season take place at the Cumberland Club. Hendon 4 ensured we finished on a positive note with a narrow victory over Kings Head 3.
Even at this late stage of the season, we still have players making their league debuts for the Club, which is great to see! On this occasion, Andrey Kovalenko and Yoni Shiran were playing their first games, and Andrey scored a draw against a strong opponent on top board.
The match was also notable for the fact that both teams fielded a parent-child pair, with Rineesh and Ronak representing Hendon (and both winning!) and Faye Ainscow and her son Matthew playing for Kings Head (and scoring 1½/2!).
Overall, the match followed the same pattern as Hendon 4’s match against Ealing 2, with all but one game won by Black! This time, the exception was the draw on Board 1, and since we had White in that game, on this occasion we came out on the right side of the 3½–2½ result!
Another way of breaking down the match is to observe that Kings Head only scored 50% on Boards 1, 5 and 6 where they had a significant rating advantage, and we only scored 50% on Boards 3 and 4 where we had a significant rating advantage, but on Board 2 where the ratings were virtually identical, Callum won!
| Hendon 4 | Hendon 4 | Kings Head 3 | Kings Head 3 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kovalenko, Andrey | ~1700 | ½ - ½ | Ainscow, Matthew | 1886 | ||
| 2 | Hill, Callum | 1687 | 1 - 0 | Osborne, WK (Bill) | 1684 | ||
| 3 | Shiran, Yoni | ~1650 | 0 - 1 | Ainscow, Faye | 1532 | ||
| 4 | Bansal, Rineesh | 1630 | 1 - 0 | Bonn, Doug M | 1501 | ||
| 5 | Mahtani, Arun | 1360 | 0 - 1 | Morton, Alistair T | 1497 | ||
| 6 | Bansal, Ronak | 1117 | 1 - 0 | Tierney, John | 1253 | ||
| 3½ - 2½ | |||||||
Many thanks to everyone who played this week, and to Chris Rogal for captaining the team.
Earlier in the week, the news was not so good, with Hendon Barnet Knights only able to find two players for their match on Monday away at Ealing. Captain Rob Willmoth made the understandable decision that it was not worth proceeding with the match, and defaulted. Unfortunately, the combination of the clash with the Barnet Knights club night, the distant away venue and the lack of players still eligible for our fifth team at this late stage of the season proved too much.
Our Middlesex League season will come to a close on 5th June, with Hendon 2 playing away at Metropolitan. Our focus now turns to the individual tournaments we have coming over the late spring and summer. Next week we have one of our occasional FIDE Rapid tournaments; then, on 29th May, our Club Championship will kick off. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at these events!