A heavily-outgraded Battersea side couldn’t hold back the tide against Hammersmith as the El Chessico was lost for the third year in a row.
The West Londoners fielded an impressive line-up for Monday’s 30-board second leg at the new London Mindsports Centre in Ravenscourt Park.
It was stacked with nine 2000-plus ECF rated players and Hammersmith’s team outgrtaded Battersea on every board except one
Despite scoring some stunning wins, Battersea were beaten 20-10 on the night and 36-24 overall following Hammersmith’s narrow win in the first leg.
Hammersmith wasted no time in crowing about it on Twitter:
Like the first leg, the match was a fiery encounter with only four draws.
Battersea fielded several new faces with Marie Obegi scoring a debut win on board 30 against Charles Rigby. Alexandre de Angelis had a thumping win while Liam Medley also won on debut.
Ehsan Farahmandpour, another relative newcomer, overcame the higher-rated Ben Rothwell.
Captain Blair Connell won on board 3. Club stalwarts Stephen Welch and Malcolm Dancy also won. Malcolm’s win over 2073-rated Bajrush Kelmendi was particularly impressive, “a f***ing crazy game” he called it.
| BOARD | GRADE | HAMMERSMITH | BATTERSEA | GRADE | ||
| 1 | 2479 | Peter Roberson | 1 | 0 | Ali Hill | 2256 |
| 2 | 2403 | Tom Rendle | 1 | 0 | Rajat Makkar | 2334 |
| 3 | 2253 | Fedja Zulfic | 0 | 1 | Blair Connell | 2215 |
| 4 | 2223 | Marco Gallana | 0.5 | 0.5 | Midhun Unnikrishnan | 2253 |
| 5 | 2193 | Thomas Bonn | 0.5 | 0.5 | Luca Buanne | 2005 |
| 6 | 2185 | Carsten Pedersen | 1 | 0 | Edmond Andal | 1937 |
| 7 | 2140 | Chris Skulte | 1 | 0 | Thomas Maddox | 1900 |
| 8 | 2110 | Jim Stevenson | 1 | 0 | Anders Lundbäck | 1900 |
| 9 | 2073 | Bajrush Kelmendi | 0 | 1 | Malcolm Dancy | 1780 |
| 10 | 1908 | Jeremy Hodgson | 1 | 0 | Bill Drennan | 1833 |
| 11 | 1900 | Gaston Franco | 1 | 0 | Atef Ramadan | 1750 |
| 12 | 1900 | Tom Townsend | 1 | 0 | Alan Palmer | 1795 |
| 13 | 1865 | Paul Kennelly | 0 | 1 | Liam Medley | 1728 |
| 14 | 1821 | Robin Sarfas | 0.5 | 0.5 | Edwin Magombe | 1650 |
| 15 | 1803 | Liam Fleming | 1 | 0 | Tom Butterworth | 1630 |
| 16 | 1780 | Adam Cranston | 1 | 0 | Arnold Hunt | 1570 |
| 17 | 1780 | John Goodacre | 1 | 0 | Joel Morales | 1600 |
| 18 | 1765 | Brian Dodgeon | 0.5 | 0.5 | Tom Palmer | 1470 |
| 19 | 1705 | Ben Rothwell | 0 | 1 | Ehsan Farahmandpour | 1509 |
| 20 | 1660 | Chris Moore | 0 | 1 | Stephen Welch | 1503 |
| 21 | 1645 | Claudio Moni | 1 | 0 | Dylan Chopra | 1450 |
| 22 | 1600 | Liam Butler | 0 | 1 | Peter Carr | 1450 |
| 23 | 1570 | David Lambert | 1 | 0 | Chris Watt | 1465 |
| 24 | 1564 | Jake Stones | 1 | 0 | Grégory Konyakhin Borrelly | 1300 |
| 25 | 1533 | Zain Patel | 1 | 0 | David Blackwell | 1330 |
| 26 | 1400 | Jamie Pitts | 1 | 0 | Sean Campbell | 1279 |
| 27 | 1400 | Guillaume Allain | 1 | 0 | Nikhil D’Souza | 1275 |
| 28 | 1400 | Todd Sandler | 0 | 1 | Alexandre de Angelis | 1000 |
| 29 | 1350 | Frank Valle | 1 | 0 | Zoya Boozorginia | 1081 |
| 30 | 1100 | Charles Rigby | 0 | 1 | Marie Obegi | 1100 |
