On Thursday, Hendon 3 and Hendon Barnet Knights hosted teams from Willesden and Kings Head respectively. Both matches ended in a tie.
This week, London was heavily affected by a strike by Tube drivers. Captains from all clubs with fixtures scheduled on Tuesday and Thursday evenings had to work out which of the players who previously committed to play would be able to make it.
In the end, Willesden had a full team but Kings Head had only four players. Under the circumstances, we agreed to play the match over four boards instead of the usual six, even though we had a full team available, and could therefore have insisted on starting 2–0 up.
Hendon 3 were very unfortunate not to win their match, especially after Callum Hill scored a fantastic win against a higher-rated opponent on Board 1. At one stage we were 3–0 up, Tom and Sundip having scored on the bottom two boards as well, and while Rineesh was a pawn down on Board 4, it looked very unlikely that we wouldn’t take even a half point on Boards 2 or 3. However, the visiting players unfortunately won both those games to tie the match.
| Hendon 3 | Hendon 3 | Willesden & Brent | Willesden & Brent | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hill, Callum | 1743 | 1 - 0 | Fulton, Anthony R | 2025 | ||
| 2 | Vorozhtsov, Ilya | 1660 | 0 - 1 | Liebesny, Simon | 1738 | ||
| 3 | Pepe, Salvatore | 1651 | 0 - 1 | Jones, Keith S | 1689 | ||
| 4 | Bansal, Rineesh | 1638 | 0 - 1 | Beachley, Evan | 1657 | ||
| 5 | Garcia, Tom | 1620 | 1 - 0 | Hwang, Johannes | 1617 | ||
| 6 | Tailor, Sundip | 1599 | 1 - 0 | Miraghaie, John | 1357 | ||
| 3 - 3 | |||||||
In the reduced Division 3 match between our junior team and Kings Head, honours were shared, as we won on the middle two boards but lost on the top and the bottom.
| Hendon Barnet Knights Juniors | Hendon Barnet Knights Juniors | Kings Head 3 | Kings Head 3 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hazell, Peter | 1878 | 0 - 1 | Jerram, Richard | 1725 | ||
| 2 | Epstein-Lightman, Yishai | 1688 | 1 - 0 | Ainscow, Faye | 1548 | ||
| 3 | Ben-Eshak, Djad | 1684 | 1 - 0 | Morton, Alistair T | 1501 | ||
| 4 | Lewis, David | 1368 | 0 - 1 | Tierney, John | 1243 | ||
| 2 - 2 | |||||||
On the same night, Hendon 2 were also due to play away against Kings Head 2, who play at the MindSports Centre in Hammersmith. Unfortunately, unlike the Cumberland Club (which is close to Finchley Road & Frognal station on the Mildmay Line), the MindSports Centre is not close to any non-Tube rail station, and we only had two players who were confident of being able to get there on time and get home afterwards.
I am exploring options with the Kings Head captain for rescheduling the match. It would be a great shame if we had to default it, since this could well cost us the Division 2 title, which I feel would be a very unjust outcome since the strike was completely outside our control. I hope to be able to report back with positive news in due course.
Many thanks to everyone who played this week!