Battersea heads into the second leg of the 30-board El Chessico 2021 with a two-point gap to make up after a fiery night of chess in SW11.
The south Londoners sit 14-16 down to west London rivals Hammersmith before the return leg of the capital’s biggest inter-club match on Monday.
Only two games ended in draws as 28 finished with blood on the board.
Game of two halves
Battersea dominated the top half of the line-up with a score of 10/15 on boards 1 to 15. But Hammersmith took the bottom 16 to 30 boards as Battersea scored only 4/15.
Both sides had a number of new faces and players making their ECF-rated game debuts.
The teams now head to Hammersmith’s home venue to duke it out in the decider.
The results in full are below:
| BOARD | GRADE | BATTERSEA | 14 | 16 | HAMMERSMITH | GRADE |
| 1 | 2275 | Ali Hill | 1 | 0 | Fedja Zulfic | 2253 |
| 2 | 2253 | Midhun Unnikrishnan | ½ | ½ | Marco Gallana | 2223 |
| 3 | 2245 | Aldo Camilleri | 1 | 0 | Thomas Bonn | 2193 |
| 4 | 2215 | Blair Connell | 1 | 0 | Chris Skulte | 2140 |
| 5 | 2005 | Luca Buanne | 1 | 0 | Christof Brixel | 2088 |
| 6 | 1998 | Tim Spanton | ½ | ½ | Jeremy Hodgson | 1908 |
| 7 | 1923 | Paul Stokes | 0 | 1 | Tom Townsend | 1900 |
| 8 | 1900 | Anders Lundbäck | 1 | 0 | Paul Kennelly | 1865 |
| 9 | 1870 | Meet Shah | 0 | 1 | Matteo Bezzini | 1818 |
| 10 | 1833 | Bill Drennan | 0 | 1 | Adam Cranston | 1780 |
| 11 | 1780 | Malcolm Dancy | 1 | 0 | John White | 1818 |
| 12 | 1743 | Tim Valentine | 1 | 0 | Brian Dodgeon | 1765 |
| 13 | 1653 | Leon Watson | 1 | 0 | Jonathan Hoong | 1713 |
| 14 | 1645 | Nour Ajili | 0 | 1 | Ben Rothwell | 1705 |
| 15 | 1623 | Fabio Buanne | 1 | 0 | Chris Moore | 1660 |
| 16 | 1570 | Arnold Hunt | 0 | 1 | Benjamin Portheault | 1653 |
| 17 | 1509 | Ehsan Farahmandpour | 0 | 1 | Claudio Moni | 1645 |
| 18 | 1500 | Matthew Bold | 0 | 1 | Liam Butler | 1600 |
| 19 | 1488 | Edward Clark | 0 | 1 | Andrew Cuff | 1570 |
| 20 | 1470 | Tom Palmer | 0 | 1 | Jake Stones | 1564 |
| 21 | 1450 | Hugo Bradshaw | 1 | 0 | Nick Groves-Kirkby | 1500 |
| 22 | 1450 | Peter Carr | 1 | 0 | Alejandro Albiol | 1400 |
| 23 | 1450 | Dylan Chopra | 1 | 0 | Peter Hessey | 1400 |
| 24 | 1440 | Paul-Hector Antoine | 0 | 1 | Jamie Pitts | 1400 |
| 25 | 1330 | David Blackwell | 0 | 1 | Todd Sandler | 1400 |
| 26 | 1279 | Sean Campbell | 0 | 1 | Javier Silvarrey | 1375 |
| 27 | 1135 | Alex Gao | 0 | 1 | Frank Valle | 1350 |
| 28 | 1100 | Grégory Konyakhin Borrelly | 1 | 0 | Jonathan Mather | 1250 |
| 29 | 1081 | Zoya Boozorginia | 0 | 1 | David Tuckey | 1250 |
| 30 | 1000 | Alexandre de Angelis | 0 | 1 | Nadim Osserian | 1135 |
