Hammersmith Chess Club has hosted its club night on Mondays for as long as I can remember. Featuring a variety of activities including lectures, tournaments, and simultaneous exhibitions, as well as special events hosted by top GMs, these club nights have proven increasingly popular, indicative of the constant progress and prosperity of the club.
As we strive to offer more and more value to our members, we are very happy to announce the introduction of a second club night, to take place weekly on Thursdays at the Mindsports Centre.
Astute readers will note that the club already books a room on Thursday nights during the league season. Historically this has been used to host matches, with members invited to play internal games on non-match nights, subject to advance notice. We have taken the decision to extend this booking throughout the summer, aiming to establish a popular and vibrant second night for Hammers to congregate and enjoy our favourite pastime.
What can you expect on Thursdays?
The intention is for Monday and Thursday club nights to fulfil slightly different purposes.
Going forward, Mondays will mostly feature more collaborative and noisy activities: lectures, simuls, handicap blitz, GM special events etc.
Thursdays will typically feature slower chess in a quieter setting. Our more experienced members are invited to walk in to find opponents for casual chess or rated games in our internal tournaments. Additionally, Thursdays will have a particular focus on welcoming beginners. This is a demographic we know to be sizeable, but for whom Monday club nights can seem intimidating and not always accessible.
To this end, we will be hosting one-hour beginner classes at 6pm every Thursday. These will be free-of-charge to all paid-up members, through to at least 20th June 2024. After the classes, an experienced member will be on hand to pair players appropriately for slow games, and available to help analyse these games afterwards.
Launch Night
Our first Thursday club night will take place next week, on 25th April 2024. We will kick things off with a 5-round rapidplay (10+5) tournament, featuring two sections:
Open Section: ECF-rated, open to all Hammer members. Sign up here.
Beginner Section: Unrated, open to very recent beginners without tournament experience. Sign up here.
Both sections will have prizes for the winners as well as various category prizes.
How can you find out more?
Further announcements and the latest club night gossip will take place in our WhatsApp groups:
Join us for a night of live commentary next Tuesday 23rd at 6:45pm as our First team plays Wood Green. Come to the Mindsports Centre and share your moves and ideas and see for yourself how a GM makes decisions in real time!
First Some Definitions…
Chess Kibitzer
An onlooker of a chess game. One who especially volunteers advice.
Kibitz in Chess
To kibitz is to offer advice and commentary when they’re not asked for.
What is happening? …next Tuesday Hammer 1 play Wood Green in a match that is our biggest challenge of the season. It is not just a chess match, it is a clash of culture, ethics and approach to life. The Hammer way that is pure and crystal clear against the Wood Green way of professionalism and greed. Essentially it is Bilbao vs Real… home grown vs mercenaries… David vs Goliath… Skywalker vs Vader….. Enough of the trash talk you get the idea.
We are utilising the DGT board to transmit the moves to our two analysts Gaston and Jim (our superior version of Thierry Henry and Roy Keane) in the T Markham room and onto the demo board… They will provide live analysis of the board one match… Definitely a GM clash.
The rest of us will be kibitzing chucking ideas at the dynamic duo and demo board and engaging in good natured Hammer banter… There may be prizes for the most correct move guessers…. Who knows.
All I can say is it will a lot of fun and hugely educational.. you will get to see how a GM thinks.. so get along.
Many years ago I watched GMs Julian Hodgson (once a Hammer) and David Norwood do this at the Timman vs Speelman WCC final at Sadlers Wells Theatre..it was educational and real fun. I say this because GM Speelman maybe playing Board one for Wood Green!
So Hammers it is free and time to get involved and become a fully qualified kibitzer..wear ur Hammer shirts and let’s have some fun.
The 2023/24 Season is reaching its crucial stage, and many of our teams have been doing well and fighting for the top stop at their respective League Table. With 15 different teams across 4 Leagues and 12 Divisions, there is still a lot to play for! We bring an update on how we’ve been doing and what to look forward to.
Team Stats and Ranks:
So far, 98 Hammersmith members have taken part of League Matches this season, playing a total of 765 games and scoring 423.5 points (55%). We’re hoping a few more newer members will join a team so we can make it to 100 before the season ends!
As for team stats, below are our standings and scores for each of them:
Notice many of them currently sitting on the top 3, with special mention to Hammersmith 1 who have already become Champions of Middlesex League Division 2 with a few matches to spare, and Hammersmith 2 securing first place on Central London League Division 3, with one final match remaining (Wanstead vs Battersea) where the former could catch us at the top – though we trust the tiebreaks will work in our favour. Congrats and big thanks to both Luke and Nick, respectively, on captaining these teams.
We also have good chances to win the trophy for the third time in 4 years in the Thames Valley League, where we are currently tied for first alongside defending champions Kingston with one more match to be played for each team – make sure to contact Bajrush if you want to take part in the final match against Maidenhead on Monday 29th of April.
Another team with good chances to end up at the top is Hammersmith 3 (Middlesex League Division 3), trying to catch up with Willesden and Brent, who started slow (2 draws and a loss) and then went on a furious rampage with 9 wins in a row. Even then, Hammer 3 has won all their matches against other clubs so far, and keeps chances to win the league by doing well in the last 3 games.
Last but not least is the remarkable campaign of Hammersmith 2 (London League Division 3), where competition has been extremely tough and several teams are still in contention: the unis UCL and KCL have had tremendous seasons and are currently tied at the top with 16 points. Hammer 2 could overtake them by winning our remaining 2 matches – but one of them is against Lewisham who could also get promoted if they don’t drop any more points in the rest of the season, so we can expect them to bring their very best.
Notable Upcoming Fixtures
In addition to the aforementioned match against Maidenhead where we’ll try to win the Thames Valley League, there are plenty other matches to look forward to!
Next Tuesday (16th April), our Women’s team will be facing Lewisham at the Mindsports Centre, where a win would take us to second place behind the runaway leaders London Universities. We are hoping to be able to use our DGT board to livestream the game and provide commentary from some Hammer players – stay tuned for more details.
A week after that (23rd April), our First team will be playing our hardest match of the year against the unstoppable Wood Green – champions of the London League every season since 2002/03. We will also use our DGT board, but we are hoping people can show up in person and support the team, there will be a commentary room at the MSC where we will analyse the game and try to get into the mind of a strong GM – an amazing chance to hear how experienced players come up with ideas during their games, don’t miss it!
There will be many matches as well during the month of May, that will help clarify the situation in most of the Leagues and Divisions, and only a handful to be played in June. While it still depends on other results over the next few weeks, there is great anticipation already for our very last match of the season: Lewisham 2 vs Hammersmith 2 (11th June)! If both teams win their remaining matches, then the result of this encounter will decide the promotion to Division 2 of the London League (while a draw could mean UCL will be the team getting promoted!).
Crowds gathering to watch Lewisham vs Hammersmith at Leadenhall Market last March
Lewisham has had a fantastic season so far, with their first team in Division 1 beating strong clubs such as Hackney and Cavendish, and they’ve shown strong results in other Leagues they play in. This undoubtedly strengthens the competitive landscape of London Chess and we look forward to high quality games in what could be the SuperBowl of Division 3!
Game of the Season Award
Like we did last year, we will be awarding the best game of the season played by a Hammersmith member with our favourite GM, Danny King, selecting the winner and publishing a video with his analysis of the best game. Getting your game analysed by a fantastic commentator such as Danny is a great honour and we encourage everyone to send in their most entertaining game of the season – please contact Gaston with your submission (highly preferable in .pgn format or text notation rather than a photo of the scoresheet). Please also include the date and teams involved, if you can.
We hope everyone has enjoyed the season so far and wish our players good luck in the remaining matches!
Yesterday the team travelled to Muswell Hill to play our 4th away match of the season. It was an important match as we had the knowledge that a win would make us champions with 3 matches to spare. There were unfortunately also many issues with team selection, as we were short of players until the day before the match, and one of the selected players found himself unwell on the day and needed a quick substitution.
Thankfully Sohum Lohia helped us solve the former issue by volunteering to play, and Christof Brixel stood in at very short notice (noon on the day) to replace the player who couldn’t play. I really appreciate Sohum and Christof for volunteering themselves ahead of this important match, especially in view of the remote location of the playing venue.
The match unfortunately didn’t start well as one of our players defaulted. However, Sohum and myself got very strong positions early in our games, and converted our advantages. Congrats also to Sohum for scoring his first win for this team. Christof then won a sharp game sending us to 3-1, so we required only one more half-point to secure our title. Eventually, Greg Billenness was the hero who scored the win to push us over the finishing line, making us the champions of the 2023-24 season of Middlesex League, Division 2! Finally, Carsten Pedersen rounded the match off in an adventurous game on the top board. As a result, we prevailed 5-1 with 5 wins, and with that our quest to be division champions culminated in success. Detailed match results are below or at this link.
With this result, we scored 9 wins out of our 9 matches (so far), which means we are champions with 3 matches to spare. The league table can be found below or at this link.
We currently have 18 match points, while no other team in the league could obtain more than 17 points even if they win all of their remaining matches. Managing 9 wins in a row has been an impressive feat, which only because of our players’ contribution was possible. Several players, including Zain Patel, Lazar Lukic, Raman Vashisht-Pigem, Maria-Alexandra Ciocan, Alexander Freeland and Paul Kennelly impressively made perfect scores in their games for this team, while players Carsten, Christof, Tom Townsend (4 games), Grigoris Sklavounos, Greg Billenness and Paul Kennelly contributed massively to our season playing many matches. Special mentions go to Chris Skulte, Tom and Christof who helped with captaining duties at (just) a few of our matches where I was late or unavailable, and Adam Cranston, who despite having never played for this team, managed some of the correspondence with ECF LMS.
The only team picture we have from a match night… we should really take some more photos…
There were also some players who scored especially important or notable results, such as Carsten, who scored the decisive victory at our away match against Metropolitan, by far our closest match of the season which we prevailed only with a tight score of 3.5-2.5; Chris, who won an important game in our close away match against Harrow Juniors back in December; Ceferino Gonzales, who took a draw in a better position in the aforementioned match against Harrow Juniors to secure our match victory; and Gaston Franco, who last week scalped a notable (home) win against Harrow Juniors’ Bodhana Sivanandan, the reigning champion of the World Youth U8 Chess Championship (Girls category). Also I must thank the players who had to replace other players at short notice, especially for matches away at remote venues, and in several cases under awful weather as well. These players include Marco Gallana and Ceferino who kindly volunteered to travel to Harrow for our aforementioned away match in December, and Sohum and Christof whose contribution in yesterday’s match was invaluable and deeply appreciated. However, it must be said that all other players contributed massively to our success this season, a perfect run is the perfect substantiation of both the ability and dedication of all of our team members. Even the smallest mishap or distraction could ruin a perfect run, but all our players managed to keep our focus right from the beginning until the end, racking up match wins after wins after wins. An impressive number of 23 different players have featured at least once in our matches. I can’t overemphasise how much I appreciate how much all our players have contributed to the team, not just by playing but also in other ways, e,g. with administrative duties, or by participating in interesting discussions in the WhatsApp group which have (arguably) helped enhance the team’s morale :D.
Example morale building post…
Players who contributed should pat yourself on the back, this team could never have achieved this much without you, and please let it be known that you have this captain’s gratitude and appreciate for what you have done. More detailed player stats can be found below, or at the link this link.
With this, the summary of our quest to be champions is concluded. Thank you all for your time.
Luke Lau
Proud Captain of Hammersmith 1, Middlesex League Division 2 Champions
