Fortified by several new recruits, Hendon’s 1st team began their Middlesex League season by winning 5-3 away to a strong Hackney 2 side.
| Hackney 2 | Hackney 2 | Hendon 1 | Hendon 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Casillas, Adrian | 188 | 0 - 1 | Trent, Lawrence | 223 | ||
| 2 | Walker, Nicholas A | 189 | 0 - 1 | Mures, Cristian | 199 | ||
| 3 | Hughes, Graham | 166 | ½ - ½ | Senior, Gary | 199 | ||
| 4 | Benyunes, Jonathon | 174 | 0 - 1 | Eden, Tomer | 195 | ||
| 5 | Emyr, Jones | - | 0 - 1 | Raoof, Adam N | 185 | ||
| 6 | Vives, Pepe | 161 | ½ - ½ | Ellis, Daniel | 179 | ||
| 7 | Lee, Edward | 158 | 1 - 0 | du Buf, Paul | - | ||
| 8 | Burgoyne, Peter A | 154 | 1 - 0 | Sanders, Isaac B | 159 | ||
| 3 - 5 | |||||||
Report from Adam Raoof:
Well. This match was a lot tighter than the final score might indicate! At one point I looked around, just to give myself a break from winning a won game (slooooowly) and noticed that we had one win (Cristian played an opening sacrifice and his opponent cooperated very nicely by castling into a murderous attack), two draws (from boards I had hoped we would win – Gary‘s opponent relentlessly simplifying, and Dan was just warming up for the rest of the season) and several lost games. Our first match was in the balance!
This all despite the addition of several new players, including International Master Lawrence Trent. He managed to win a tough game against one of my regular opponents, Adrian Casillas. Our two other recruits fared less well. Paul du Buf had a tricky opening and emerged a pawn down in a complex position, but his opponent played very solidly for the rest of the game and never looked like returning the material. Isaac Sanders is clearly going to be a force in the future, and is pretty dangerous now! But his experienced opponent defended his rather poor Dragon setup well, and with an enterprising middlegame sac or two proved too tricky for Isaac – this time.
Right next to me, Tomer had spent 40 minutes for one move and, running short of time, offered his opponent the chance to repeat moves. His opponent rejected this chance and went for a tricky but inferior line, not realising that our man regularly makes the time control even when he has 20 moves to make in a few minutes.
Having taken all this in, I spotted an neat way to invade white’s position, won a piece (I missed an easier win with Ne5, b4, axb4, Qxb4! and then a Nd3+ after the exchanges!) and managed to get the full point to win the match. Hoorah!