Author: Gaston Franco

The Hammersmith World Cup!

The football World Cup may have ended, but on Monday 20/07 we ran our own extremely convoluted version of it, this one being played at the chess board!

The idea originated from our member Joe Francis, who was recently featured on The Independent’s article “Is online gaming ruining chess? Players say it’s not quite as black and white as that“. Joe also crafted some prizes for the winners! Each player would get assigned a country from the World Cup and play for either the Cup, the Plate, or the Cake!

The Cup and Plate, handcrafted by Joe Francis

This is how it all worked: the tournament started with the Group Stage, with the top 2 of each group moving on to the Round of 16. Games were played with Blitz time controls and the players getting eliminated either at the group stages or at the round of 16 would then get entered into a Swiss tournament – winner gets the Cake! This meant that everyone got a chance to play several games, even after getting knocked out of the main competition early on.

The second “split” would take place after the Quarterfinals, meaning once again that the number of games remained relatively similar for each player. The winners of this stage would move on to the Semifinals and aim to win the Cup, while the losers of the QFs would go into their own bracket, competing for the Plate.

World Cup underway! Players were wearing stickers with their assigned countries’ flags.

The Cup Final was a 4-game match between Luke Lau and Uri Weitzenfeld. The former was playing as Norway, perhaps more of a homage to Magnus Carlsen than to Erling Haaland, while the latter was representing Spain and trying to replicate their success at the Metlife Stadium on Sunday.

As most of our Rapid and Blitz tournaments go, Luke was victorious! In the other sections, the Plate Final saw Gaston Franco‘s Argentina barely defeating Mark Addis‘s Australia in their 4th game, while the Swiss tournament ended with a clear win for Daniel Ludlam‘s Scotland, who took home the Cake!

The winners! Left to Right: Daniel Ludlam, Luke Lau, Gaston Franco

Many thanks once again to Joe Francis for the idea and the prizes, and to Adam Cranston for running the tournament on the day. Hope all the participants enjoyed the event, and let us know if you’d like to suggest or plan any other activity in the future!

Season Review and Annual Awards Night!

With the 2025/26 season almost over, Club Captain Gastón Franco shares a brief review of our results, as well as announcing our annual Awards Night, with the return of our favourite world-famous presenter…

We fielded 19 teams this season, three more than last year with the addition of a second Women’s team and two teams in the brand new U1400 “Minor” division of the London League, one for our less experienced juniors and one for adult beginners. The broad range of competitions gives us more room to allocate players to teams and divisions, and to give everyone a chance to play at various levels.

Team Stats

Indeed, some of our teams were clear favourites in their divisions, while others were punching above their weight! So each team often has their own goals and aspirations, and they may even gravitate toward opposite ends of their respective league tables. Nonetheless, it has been a very successful season with 5 Promotions and no Relegations! Overall, 11 out of 19 teams ended in the top 3, including at least 3 division winners! The teams lifting the trophies were Hammer 1  &  3 in the Central London League and Hammer Cadets in the London League. Hammersmith Juniors is also currently in first place so we retain a chance to win Division 4 too! Other clubs still have some matches remaining in this competition and may surpass the Juniors in the end.

Teams Stats 2025-2026
Ranks and results by team. (P) indicates promotion to a higher division

Adding up all the numbers, we can see our teams won just a bit over half of their matches, with an average match score of ~59%. The total number of games amounts to almost 1,200 and we had over 150 Hammers taking part! Joining these matches is a great opportunity to gain same valuable experience at the chess board, and we look forward to seeing even more new players next season.

Making it happen

We should also send our thanks to all the Captains involved in organising our teams! Many of them have been in their roles for many seasons, but new teams also mean new captains! We added Florin, Sarah and Srishti to our roster this year, and they have all done a great job. As we try to decide on how many teams we’ll field next season, we welcome any volunteers who would like to Captain a team so we can continue to expand our offerings to all members. The bulk of the role is mainly just messaging players and putting a team together from their responses, and it even comes with some perks such as the ability to select yourself whenever you want to play, getting to meet new teammates, and access to the exclusive end-of-season Captain’s Dinner at the Ritz*.

*(or a cheaper alternative, as approved by our Treasurer)

Jokes aside, every bit of work anyone can offer is great help to our Club! As you know, all our activities are planned and executed by our members, for our members. Please message Gastón if you would like to be a Captain or if you have any questions, and here is more info on other activities you could Volunteer for.

Grandmaster Daniel King. Photo by Lennart Ootes

Awards Night and Game of the Season

We’re delighted to announce our annual Awards Night will take place on Monday 27th July and GM Danny King will return as the judge of our Game of the Season! Danny always gives entertaining commentary on the selected games before naming the winner, and there will be even more awards given out on the night. Take a look at last year’s awards!

If you have played any games this season that you would like to nominate, please send to Gastón via WhatsApp or email him at gastonfranco1990@gmail.com before Friday July 17th to give Danny time to review. The games do not need to be from our Leagues, but they must have been played this season! Members of any rating or playing experience can make a submission (just one per person!)

The Do’s and Don’ts:

Please do send the game notation in text format, including the date and the names of both players. Please do not send a photo or gif file as those are very time consuming to process, specially for longer games.

Looking forward to seeing your brilliancies! Join us on the 27th to find out who’s won!
Gastón Franco, Club Captain

Hammersmith Chess Featured on the Perpetual Chess Podcast

We’re delighted to share that Hammersmith Chess Club was featured on the Perpetual Chess Podcast. In this episode, Club Captain Gastón Franco talks about how the club grew from fewer than 20 members into one of the most active and welcoming clubs in London.

Some highlights include:

Listen to the podcast on Spotify or watch the video on YouTube, both included below:

Half Way Stage, Half Our Teams No. 1

Happy New Year! Hammersmith Chess Club will soon resume their league activity with 4 matches to be played on the week of 5th Jan, and we share an update on how we’ve done so far this season. Almost half of our teams stand at the top of their respective league tables!

Given we have 19 different teams, it’s no surprise that we’ve already had lots of competitive chess in the first few months of the season. Indeed, since September we have already played nearly 450 games! The season will run until June 2026, which means there is still much to look forward to, and newer members who haven’t played yet will have more than enough opportunities to join a team – speak to a captain or feel free to message me directly if you’re not sure where to start!

Below is a summary of our stats by team so far. It’s comforting to notice that 9 (out of 19) teams are currently in sole or shared first place in their divisions! This includes: most of our “first” teams; our Women’s team (defending champions); our Juniors team, crushing it in an adult division;  and two brand new teams (Mackenzie and Cadets) currently sharing first place in the Minor Division of the London League; and our only team still on 100% score: Hammersmith 3 on the Central London League – and more!

9 of our teams currently lead their divisions

The irregular scheduling of matches makes some of these stats hard to compare against other clubs which might have played a much different number of games so far. But you can only count the points you’ve earned at the board! Speaking of which, the above numbers add up to 36 match-wins to 31 losses (plus 10 draws), rounding to about 53.25% (slightly better than White’s average score per game, according to Lichess stats!)

Upcoming matches

We have 22 matches in January, with spots filling up fast! I hand-picked a few of them that I think will be interesting to follow, so keep an eye on our group chats to see how we’re doing!

8th January: Hammersmith Mackenzie vs Hammersmith Cadets (London League Minor). Two of our teams facing each other for the second time this season! The young Cadets won the first match 3-1 back in September. Will Mackenzie strike back?

15th January: Hammersmith 3 vs Pimlico 4 (Central London League Division 4). We maintain a 100% record in this division and Pimlico is currently in second place. A win would be a big step towards promotion to Division 3.

20th January: London Women Hou vs Hammersmith Women 1 and Wimbledon Women vs Hammersmith Women 2 (London League Women’s). Both of our Women’s team are playing on the same night! Our respective opponents have similar playing strength to our teams, so both matches will be hard fought.

27th January: Hammersmith 1 vs Wood Green (London League Division 1). Our toughest match of the year against the perennial champions of the London League. Even though we will be the underdogs, we have defeated them in the past so it can be done again!

Good luck to all our players in the rest of the season (and don’t forget to save the scoresheets of your good wins for our annual Awards Night!) and wishing everybody a Happy 2026!
Gastón

2024/25 Awards Night with GM Danny King

Hammersmith Chess Club invited GM Daniel King once again to present our annual awards for the 2024/25 Season. Danny selected our Game of the Season and showed interesting positions from other nominated games. There were additional prizes for the best players of the season and the winners of our internal tournament series.

GM Daniel King presenting to a large audience at the Mindsports Centre

Danny kicked things off by scattering a few interesting positions from the games around the room and asking the audience to take a look at them and try to find the best move in each position – this ensured the session would be interactive as members were able to suggest moves, at times even surprising the Grandmaster with their creative ideas.

With his trademark charismatic and engaging style, DK walked us through the critical positions of the games, which were played throughout the season by a wide range of our members at all levels, from amateurs to masters. Indeed, it was possible to spot our top IMs Peter Roberson and Tom Rendle in the audience, as well as the winner of the previous two years, Marco Gallana.

This time, the award went to one of our top juniors, Kai Hanache, for his Round 1 win at the English Championship in July. The game featured a positional queen sacrifice which left Kai’s opponent with very passive pieces and an endangered King, until eventually Kai regained the queen while winning material in the process. Replay the game below, and watch the other nominated games on this Lichess Study

After announcing the winner, Danny also presented awards for various categories and internal tournament winners, all of whom received a certificate and a £10 voucher for Chess & Bridge. The full list of winners is below:

    • Player of the Season: Gaston Franco
    • First Team Player of the Season: Ash Stewart
    • Junior of the Season: Aryaman Ganguly
    • Woman of the Season: Swati Singha
    • Captain of the season: John White
    • Sledgehammer Winner: Sarah Ewart
    • Rockhammer Winner: Nick Fookes
    • Handicap Blitz Winner: Thomas Bonn
    • Game of the Season: Kai Hanache
Prize winners receiving awards from GM Danny King. Top L to R: Sarah Ewart, Thomas Bonn, John White. Bottom L to R: Kai Hanache, Gaston Franco, Nick Fookes

Many thanks once again to GM Daniel King, who will also analyse the game on his Youtube Channel (PowerPlayChess) soon. He stressed how difficult it has become to select a winner year after year given the club’s increasing success, with more members, more games being played, and more brilliant moves! As the ECF Club of the Year, let’s make it even harder to choose the 2026 Game of the Season!