Last Thursday, Hendon 2 beat Willesden & Brent 4½–1½ at home, an identical scoreline to the away match against the same opponents two weeks earlier. Meanwhile, Hendon 4 narrowly lost to Ealing 2 by 2½–3½.
Hendon 2 out-rated our opponents by an average of 180 points, with particularly large advantages on the lower boards, so we were hopeful of victory, especially having recently defeated our opponents away from home.
It was great to see our Events Manager Adam Raoof make a rare appearance at the board, and even better to see him win! We also scored 3½/4 on the bottom four boards, ensuring we won the match comfortably.
| Hendon 2 | Hendon 2 | Willesden & Brent | Willesden & Brent | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Raoof, Adam N | 2047 | 1 - 0 | Fulton, Anthony R | 2015 | ||
| 2 | Amior, David | 1992 | 0 - 1 | Cowan, Xavier | 1907 | ||
| 3 | Killick, Tristan | 1894 | 1 - 0 | Liebesny, Simon | 1736 | ||
| 4 | Alster, Robert | 1851 | ½ - ½ | Jones, Keith S | 1686 | ||
| 5 | Napolitano, Domenico N | 1849 | 1 - 0 | Hwang, Johannes | 1610 | ||
| 6 | Nilim, Armaan | 1845 | 1 - 0 | Silverman, Cliff S | 1440 | ||
| 4½ - 1½ | |||||||
This was Hendon 2’s sixth win in a row. We are currently top of the Division 2 table by a full match point, though second-placed Ealing 1 have a match in hand. Given that we are still to play bottom-placed Harrow 2 twice, if we can beat third-placed Harrow 1 at home this week, we will be extremely unfortunate not to finish in the promotion places.
On the same evening, Hendon 4 faced a depleted Ealing 2 side, who defaulted two boards. Unfortunately, we found ourselves out-rated on the remaining four, and despite valiant efforts we only scored half a point, Adam Smylie taking our only draw. That meant we narrowly lost the match.
| Hendon 4 | Hendon 4 | Ealing 2 | Ealing 2 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kovalenko, Andrey | 1789 | 0 - 1 | Healeas, Simon | 1851 | ||
| 2 | Garcia, Tom | 1637 | 0 - 1 | Corpus, Jan Michael | 1669 | ||
| 3 | Smylie, Adam | 1415 | ½ - ½ | Subbaraj, Subas | 1569 | ||
| 4 | Abraham, Abe | 1201 | 0 - 1 | Dykes, Robert | 1266 | ||
| 5 | WALKOVER | 1 - 0 | DEFAULT | ||||
| 6 | WALKOVER | 1 - 0 | DEFAULT | ||||
| 2½ - 3½ | |||||||
Many thanks to everyone who played in these matches, and helped organise them!