A very happy New Year from Hendon Chess Club! We are back underway after the Christmas break. The January blitz took place on Thursday 8th, with a hardy set of players braving the stormy weather to get to the Cumberland Club!
The Middlesex League was due to get underway with an away match on 6th January at Potters Bar, but this was postponed due to the icy conditions. Instead, we resumed with an away match on Wednesday at West London, and then a home match between Hendon Barnet Knights and Hackney 2.
West London away is always likely to be the toughest fixture of the season, and so it proved, with our opponents fielding only one player without a FIDE title (their top five boards were a GM, a WGM, an IM, a WGM, and an IM).
Given this, we did extremely well to restrict them to a 4–2 win. Rob Willmoth drew with GM John Emms on top board, Ethan Sanitt defeated WGM Andreea Navrotescu on 2, and Samuel Tombs drew on board 6. Congratulations to the players for showing we can still be competitive when out-rated by over 200 points on every board!
| West London | West London | Hendon 1 | Hendon 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Emms, John M (GM) | 2436 | ½ - ½ | Willmoth, Robert F (CM) | 2219 | ||
| 2 | Navrotescu, Andreea-Cristiana (WGM) | 2408 | 0 - 1 | Sanitt, Ethan | 2161 | ||
| 3 | Buckley, Graeme N (IM) | 2355 | 1 - 0 | Macneil, Elliott CM | 1997 | ||
| 4 | Mirzoeva, Elmira (WGM) | 2340 | 1 - 0 | Rubeck, Jonathan | 1954 | ||
| 5 | Zapolskis, Antanas (IM) | 2273 | 1 - 0 | Nilim, Armaan | 1865 | ||
| 6 | Stewart, Ashley | 2216 | ½ - ½ | Tombs, Samuel | 1837 | ||
| 4 - 2 | |||||||
The following day, Hendon Barnet Knights Juniors played Hackney 2 at home. Hackney fielded a strong team and won 5–1. Congratulations to Stanley for defeating a higher-rated opponent!
| Hendon Barnet Knights Juniors | Hendon Barnet Knights Juniors | Hackney 2 | Hackney 2 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hazell, Peter | 1835 | 0 - 1 | Robinson, Adam | 1888 | ||
| 2 | Ben-Eshak, Djad | 1608 | 0 - 1 | Procopie, Andrei | 1645 | ||
| 3 | Jacobs, Stanley G | 1455 | 1 - 0 | Hayes, Christopher | 1658 | ||
| 4 | Kapur, Gul | 1440 | 0 - 1 | Kirk, Jack | 1656 | ||
| 5 | Gordon, Marcus | 1426 | 0 - 1 | Morgan, Marc | 1653 | ||
| 6 | Tan, Austin | 1023 | 0 - 1 | Lazaridi, Ioanna | |||
| 1 - 5 | |||||||
We were also due to host a match between Hendon 3 and Harrow 1 on this date, but this match was postponed at the request of the Harrow captain.
Many thanks to everyone who played in and helped organise these matches!