Our 1st team somehow managed to preserve its 100% record this season with a remarkable away win at Ealing in Division 1 of the Middlesex League.
| Ealing 1 | Ealing 1 | Hendon 1 | Hendon 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Perkins, Alan H | 207 | 0 - 1 | D'Costa, Lorin AR | 217 | ||
| 2 | Smith, Martin | 193 | 1 - 0 | Mures, Cristian | 202 | ||
| 3 | Randall, Simon | 202 | 0 - 1 | Eden, Tomer | 201 | ||
| 4 | Quinn, John M | 188 | 1 - 0 | Levene, Mark | 201 | ||
| 5 | Wells, Tony D | 183 | 0 - 1 | Willmoth, Robert F | 191 | ||
| 6 | Lamb, H Michael | 176 | ½ - ½ | Warman, Simon M | 178 | ||
| 7 | Tserendorj, Sainbayar | 167 | ½ - ½ | Senior, Gary | 182 | ||
| 8 | Ebbett, David | 166 | ½ - ½ | Raoof, Adam N | 180 | ||
| 3½ - 4½ | |||||||
Report by Adam Raoof
Warman is Hendon’s Hero!
A close match
Taking a look at the grades we saw that – although we had a nominal advantage on paper – several of Ealing’s fielded players are undergraded this season. We were in for a long evening.
I sat down to play Ealing’s ex-captain, Dave Ebbett, who pointed out that all our previous individual encounters had been drawn.
We’re, like, totally going to lose (first 2 hrs 30 mins of session)
Cristian lost to Martin Smith quite quickly, John Quinn had Mark on the ropes and broke through neatly to win, and we wrote off Simon Warman’s game totally.
Dave Ebbett offered me a draw.
Alan Perkins was doing well against Lorin, and Tomer had 1 minute left to play 5 moves in a delicately-poised endgame. Tony Wells’ pieces were becoming active as he opened up the centre, and he was staring longingly at Rob’s king!
We might lose respectably (30 mins to end of session)
Dave Ebbett offered me a draw.
I looked around the games, and frankly the match result was obvious – things had changed on Rob’s board and he would probably win, Tomer had somehow reached the time control and would probably convert the rook ending, and Simon was going to lose as he was now piece and pawns down.
After 30 moves and in an opposite coloured bishops ending I eventually offered Dave Ebbett a draw.
Rob cleverly outplayed Tony Wells, winning his queen. Tomer came through against Simon Randall. Lorin suddenly came over and announced he had won.
It’s a draw! (6 mins to end of session)
In deep time-trouble, Gary offered a draw to secure the result of the match as at least a draw.
We won??! (2 mins to end of session)
We gathered around Simon’s board, waiting for him to finally lose and end a tough match 4-4 all square fair result guv. Somehow Simon managed to hypnotise his opponent into giving up his extra piece to go into a king and pawn ending, then sacrificing one of his two extra pawns to promote. Unfortunately Simon also had a passed pawn and promoted on the next move – and easily drew the Q and P ending to win us the match!