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.

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.

Awards Night and Game of the Season

We’re delighted to announce our annual Awards Night will take place on Monday 27^th 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 17^th 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