A report on our team chess in 2025-26

By Andrew Medworth, Hendon Club Captain

Sunday 19 July, 2026

The Middlesex League has now wrapped up for the 2025–26 season, so here is my annual round-up of our team chess.

We ran five teams for the second season in a row (having run four in 2023–24). Here is a summary of our results:

Full results for every match may be found here.

The main headline this year is that Hendon 2 were Division 2 champions, and will play in Division 1 next season! That means that from September, we will have two Division 1 teams, one Division 2 team, and two Division 3 teams.

Participation

Our league participation expanded by 12% this year, with 74 team fixtures played (up from 66 last year) and 444 team places (up from 396). Overall, the Middlesex League had the same number of teams as last season (one more in Division 2 and one fewer in Division 3), but last season there were two Harrow Juniors teams who did not schedule any fixtures, so the number of active teams, and thus the number of matches actually played, went up.

The Club was represented by 70 different players over the course of the season, slightly down from 73 last year.

Hendon 1

Hendon 1 was captained by Eric Eedle. The team played in Division 1, which was won comprehensively by West London; they won 13 of their 14 matches, losing only to runners-up Muswell Hill 1 in their opening fixture.

Hendon 1 had an up-and-down season. They got a couple of early wins against Kings Head 1 and Metropolitan to start on 2/3, but then lost six of the next eight matches and were in some danger of relegation. However, the team finished the season strongly, defeating old rivals Hackney, completing the double over Metropolitan, and drawing against Albany, to finish comfortably in mid-table (fourth of eight teams).

In addition to West London and Muswell Hill 1, the other team above us was Hammersmith 1; the teams below us were Albany, Hackney 1, Kings Head 1 and Metropolitan, the latter two being relegated to Division 2.

In addition to thanking Eric for captaining the team, I would also like to congratulate him on his outstanding performance, scoring 8/11 for the team with a rating performance of 2330!

Hendon 2

Hendon 2 was captained by me, and I’m delighted to report that we won Division 2, 1½ match points ahead of Ealing 1! We only lost twice all season, away against Ealing and against Harrow 2.

For much of the second half of the season, we were neck-and-neck with Ealing. When we were unable to raise a team for the away match against Kings Head 2 on 23rd April due to the Tube strikes, I was afraid a default might lose us the title. The Kings Head captain was kind enough to allow the fixture to be rescheduled; because we didn’t have enough remaining room bookings at the Cumberland Club, I reserved alternative accommodation at Netherhall House nearby, and we won the match.

In the end, the result didn’t matter, as Ealing had already lost their last match against Hammersmith 2, meaning that (much like Arsenal in the Premier League this season!) we became assured of victory on a night when we didn’t play ourselves!

I’d like to thank and congratulate everyone who played for Hendon 2 this season, in order of appearances:

• David Amior, David Ben-Nathan, Elliott Macneil, Armaan Nilim, Avinash Reddy and Jonathan Rubeck (8 appearances each)
• Robert Alster and Andreas Bohnacker (6 appearances each)
• Aviraj Bhaduri, Vasileios Kollias and myself (4 appearances each)
• Domenico Napolitano (3 appearances)
• Saniru Lohan Atulugamage, Jack Booker, Eric Eedle, Gautam Jain, Alex Funk, Tristan Killick (2 appearances each)
• Andrey Kovalenko, Adam Raoof, Christopher Rogal, Ethan Sanitt, Gary Senior (1 appearance each)

Top scorer for the team was Armaan Nilim with 6½/8, closelly followed by Elliott Macneil (6/8) and Avinash Reddy (5/8).

Hendon 3

Hendon 3 was captained by Sundip Tailor, and later in the season by Jack Booker, who is taking over from Sundip as captain next season. The team played in Division 2 along with Hendon 2.

The team struggled at the start of the season, losing six of their first eight matches, but recovered to score 50% in their last eight. In the end this was just enough to avoid relegation, as the team finished a half match point above Harrow 2 and a point above Muswell Hill 2. (The teams below Hendon 2 and Ealing 1 but above Hendon 3 were Harrow 1, Willesden & Brent, Hammersmith 2 and Kings Head 2).

Congratulations to Sundip and Jack for keeping the team up! Had Hendon 3 been relegated, we would have had no Division 2 teams at all next season, which would have been very odd!

Hendon 4

Hendon 4 was captained by Chris Rogal. In keeping with tradition, we followed a policy of not picking the strongest team, instead rotating by preferring players who had played the fewest matches during the season to date across all our teams.

In past seasons, this hasn’t had too bad an impact on the team’s results, but this year the team finished bottom of Division 3, a full match point behind Potters Bar and Hammersmith 4.

Objectively speaking, the team did very similarly to Hendon 3: 5/14 is only slightly lower than Hendon 3’s 6/16, the game points scores of the two teams were also very similar (42% vs 43%). However in Division 3 this was enough to finish bottom.

This has no real consequences, as there is no relegation from Division 3. However it is worth considering whether we should try to tweak our selection policy a bit. While it’s obviously important that as many people as possible have a chance to play, we also want people to have the opportunity to be on the winning side.

Hendon Barnet Knights Juniors

Hendon Barnet Knights Juniors was captained by Rob Willmoth. The team finished in mid-table in Division 3, in fourth place behind Hackney 2 and Hammersmith 3 (who are promoted) and Ealing 2, and ahead of Kings Head 3, Potters Bar, Hammersmith 4 and Hendon 4.

The team didn’t win a single away match all season (unless you count the nominal “away” fixture against Hendon 4, which was played at our home venue). However, they only lost one match at home, so picked up enough points there to finish in a decent position.

I’d especially like to highlight the performance of Djad Ben-Eshak, who scored a fantastic 7/8 for the team this season. Djad scored more points than the next two highest scorers combined. Very well done to him!

Individual highlights

In keeping with tradition, I will now highlight some of the outstanding individual contributions this season.

Firstly, here are the players who rank in the top 10 by number of appearances for Hendon teams this season. Players who turn up “week in, week out” are incredibly valuable to captains, so thank you all very much!

Here are the top scorers for the Club this season:

Here are the top scorers by percentage (minimum 3 games played):

Here are the top rating performances in the club (minimum 3 games played). This is like a top-scorers table which takes the strength of opponents faced into account (though note, here and below, that players scoring 100% cannot be assigned a performance rating, so cannot appear in these tables):

Finally, here is a list of the players whose rating performance exceeded their rating by the largest margin (minimum 3 games played). I think of this as a kind of “most improved player” ranking. It is unsurprising to see a junior player at the top of this table – congratulations to Callum! – but there are plenty of adults here too!

Congratulations to everyone above for their excellent seasons! Apologies to those who just missed out on featuring: I have to cut these tables somewhere!

Away matches

Over the past few years, I’ve been keeping a particular eye on our away match results, and I will now turn to these here.

Away matches are always the most challenging for any captain, as they typically require longer and less convenient travel arrangements for players, and can be on weeknights other than Thursdays, when our members may have other regular commitments.

As such, away matches typically attract much fewer volunteers than home matches, especially at the venues furthest from us, such as Ealing, Hammersmith and Hackney. The worst difficulties arise if we are unlucky enough that one of these matches coincides with other problems, such as public transport strikes or extreme weather, as happened with Kings Head in April this year, or at Potters Bar in the New Year.

This is typically the main constraint on our ability to run more teams: it does not matter how much surplus demand there is for home matches if we cannot find enough away players for a new team.

There will always be certain types of member who find away matches especially difficult: the obvious example is junior players, whose parents may understandably want to make sure they are not too late to bed for school the next day. Even with adults, we are not entitled to expect people to prioritise playing in away matches over other important things in their lives, such as paid work, family, other hobbies and interests, or simply their own rest and wellbeing.

That being said, the concept of a home/away chess league inherently requires players willing to play away. Collectively speaking, we cannot expect other clubs to come to us if we are not willing to go to them. We are very much dependent as a club on those who are able and willing to play away.

I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who played away this season, especially those who did so regularly. Here are the players ranked in the top 10 away appearances:

Overall, of the 70 players who represented Hendon teams this season, 50 (71%) played at least one away match, and 37 (53%) played at least two. This is broadly similar to last season, where the equivalent figures were 73% and 45%.

In past seasons, finding away players has been a real challenge, with large imbalances between home and away results. However, in that regard, this year was the best I can remember in all my time as captain.

Here is a summary of our results in matches against other clubs, broken down by venue:

This shows that in total, this season we scored 55% of our wins, 56% of our match points and 55% of our game points at home. This is the most balanced in a number of years: last year the equivalent figures were 68%, 68% and 58%.

Here is a summary of how our teams compared to their opponents, home and away:

This shows that of all our teams, only Hendon 2 out-rated their opponents on average, and they did so both home and away. While our other teams were out-rated on average, the differences were not generally large, with the exception of Hendon 1 away.

I find it interesting to look at all teams in the league and rank them by the difference between their average strength home and away. A few years ago, Hendon 1 would regularly top this table. How, however, there are no Hendon teams in the top 5, with our teams having differences no more than 50 points. This is hard to improve upon given the factors mentioned above.

Conclusion

For the past couple of seasons, I have lamented the fact that “nothing much happened” for us in the league, with none of our teams finishing in promotion or relegation places. This year I have got my wish!

One of the noteworthy features of the Middlesex League over many years has been the large gulf in class between the top two divisions. If we look at the average ratings of players on each board, here is how the divisions compared this season:

This shows that when you move up from Division 2 to Division 1, you can expect to face opposition around 300 points stronger on any given board, which is a very significant difference.

As such, I expect our second team will have a tough time in Division 1 next season. This is simply a fact of life in a divisional league: success brings even greater challenges! If we are relegated again next season, so be it.

I’d like to thank captains Eric, Sundip, Jack, Chris and Rob for their efforts organising our teams this season!

Thank you to everyone who played for one or more of our teams, especially if you played away from home and/or helped put out or clear away equipment at home.

See you next season!