Leamington League Division 1 Winners 2025 Leamington League Division 2 Winners 2025 Leamington League Open Knock Out Cup Winners 2025 Leamington League U-8750 Cup Winners 2025 Runner-Up - ECF Website of the Year 2018
This would probably be the world's easiest ever spot the difference competition - except its not! Instead please identify the three trophies that the Club Organiser (that would be me) was presented with by League Officer Tom Darling at the recent Leamington League AGM. If you've been a regular reader of the Blog, or even if you have just been paying attention to what's been going on in the local chess world, this should be pretty easy.
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
As its been quite a long interval since the last post, I'm desperate to include some music. So here's a song I've only recently discovered (much to my shame) thanks to a CD (kids, get your parents to explain what these are) bought at the Kenilworth Oxfam shop! Hope you find it as haunting and beautiful as I do. Incredibly moving vocals by Gram Parsons.
Apparently this was the favourite song of the late, great Duane Allman, which probably explains why this version was produced. Sorry, though, Gregg - I'm taking the Flying Burrito Brothers version every time!
From which you'll have guessed that one of our finalists triumphed and the other didn't! It was the Open KO Cup team which was successful - for the sixth successive time - while the U8750 team, sadly lacking captain and inspiration Ben who was away on business, fell at the final hurdle in its defence of the trophy it had won for the last two years.
I didn't see very much of the U8750 match, but it was clear from the outset that it was going to be a tough fight against a strong Banbury side, packed with former/current A team players. Our only victor was Steph on Board 5, already the hero for stepping in as a late replacement for Patrick, against the rapidly improving Banbury junior, Dylan Harvey. At the other end of the team, Paul secured an excellent draw against Paul Rowan on top board, but elsewhere the momentum seemed to be largely with Banbury for much of the evening. Phil lost on Board 2 to Nathan Manley and Dylan on 4 to Nick Martin. Which meant that even when Dan was still engaged in a heavyweight time scramble against Mal Waddell on Board 3, our fate was already sealed, as in the event of a tied match Banbury would have won on board elimination. But as Dan flagged, it actually ended as a 3.5-1.5 win for Banbury. So no hat trick for us!
But at the end of the evening, there was a double hat-trick for our Open KO Cup team, as we eventually powered to a 4.5-0.5 win over Leamington on a highly poignant evening, as it was Javier's last match for the club after three and a half seasons. Thankfully he ended his Kenilworth years with another win, taking his overall record to 39/51 (76.5%), mainly on board 1 and never playing below board 2. During this time he lost only 5 games, 3 of which were in the Coventry League and so don't really count! His final victim was Tom Darling after a game where Javi nursed an extra pawn for a long time before converting the advantage to an extra piece, and then neatly sacrificing his rook temporarily to exchange down into a winning king and pawn ending. Thanks for everything, amigo and buena suerte en Espana! (A fuller reflection on Javier's Kenilworth years will appear in due course.)
Despite the lop-sided final score line, this match was by no means a walk in the park. Indeed for much of the evening I thought we were in grave danger of losing, as it seemed to me that we were dead lost on two boards after less than an hour's play. This is the risk you face when Bruce and Josh are in the team, I guess! I was sat next to Joshua and watched in horror as he virtually forced Andy Collins to make a winning knight sacrifice on e6. I say sacrifice, but as Andy's next move was to capture an unprotected bishop with check, it was a very short-term sacrifice! Joshua was two pawns down with a totally busted - virtually unplayable - position. We'll leave it there for now - but we will return!
The other cause of worry was Bruce's encounter with Joshua Simpson on Board 3. (Meaning there were 2 Dylans in the U8750 match and 2 Joshuas in the Open final. Wonder what the odds of that were?) Already stamped with a very sketchy personal record in Cup Finals for us (I can immediately recall 2 disastrous efforts!), Bruce seemed hell-bent on adding to the roll of dishonour, quickly joining Joshua in the 2 pawns down camp. Now this time it was deliberate (or at least semi-deliberate!) as there were compensations and the position was very dynamic. The White king was stuck in the centre; Bruce's pieces were active; White had a bad bishop; there was a king-side pawn storm underway ...... But it was 2 pawns! I didn't believe it for one minute until I sensed a presence by my left shoulder and saw that Bruce was entering the result on the match score card on the table next to me. Of course he'd won. Never in doubt. Always plenty of compensation according to the engine. Blah-di-blah. Still looked highly dubious to me!
But with at least one crisis averted, things were much brighter. Javier duly won and then Andrew followed suit, after a rather unexciting game against Ben Egid which went into a slightly better ending that he somehow converted. Not much to see here. Move along please!
So the cup was secured well before I crawled my way to a highly unconvincing win over Tom Cockell on Board 4 where its eminently possible I was much worse/totally lost for some time. Though neither of us really knew for sure! After finding it very hard to get any kind of activity going, I eventually ended up with a pawn chain running from e3 to b6. Black still had a dark squared bishop and if it ever got to the e3 pawn it would then just start munching the rest of the chain, Pacman style. Alternatively, he might have sacrificed an exchange on e3 and then won the d4 pawn, when c5 and b6 pawns would also go. Somehow none of this happened, but it cost me lots of time to try and avoid these latent threats. However, I finally unravelled and managed to exchange both rooks leaving me with queen and knight against queen and bishop. But by this time I had got my act together and had managed to get my knight to f5 and my queen in on c7 targeting pawns at b7 and f7. Tom jumped out with his queen, but there was only one check and he found he couldn't do anything about my threat of Qxg7 mate. Probably a very lucky win.
However, that does leave one game unfinished. While I was suffering the tortures of the damned I happened to eventually glance over at the board 5 game and couldn't believe the transformation that had occurred! Joshua was still two pawns down, but the only material left on the board was a rook each and White pawns on a5 and h7. And to make matters worse, Andy's rook was stuck on h8 defending the advanced pawn. With Joshua's king perfectly placed on b7 to prevent the a pawn advancing there was no way for Andy to make progress, as his king could not escape checks whenever it approached the h7 pawn to try and free the rook from its defensive duties. Cue the music!
A Great Escape, indeed! I think even Josh was embarrassed by this, but it has to be said - he really is "as cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University".
So one cup will be returning to Kenilworth to spend another year on display at Page Towers, but the other will disappear south down the M40. For those interested, the U1600 Cup was won by Leamington, who defeated Shirley 3-1.
With Javier's departure, this feels like the end of an era. We've won Division 1 and the cup in each of the 4 seasons he has played for us, and he also arrived just in time to help us win the Coventry League for the only time in 2023 (despite losing to Joshua in the decisive final match) before deciding to give that competition a wide berth. (Losing to Josh will do that!) I don't know how he'd like to sum up his Kenilworth years. Maybe like this?! 😄
A Wednesday evening in early May can mean only one thing - its the Leamington league Blitz Championship. This has been turned into something of a Kenilworth benefit event in recent seasons, largely due to Javier's total dominance - he won in each of the three years he played (2023-25), sharing the title in the middle year with Bruce. Additionally, Bernard and Keatan have won the second rating section in the last two years.
But come 2026 and where are these titans? Not in Solihull, that's for sure! (I'm not going to let the fact that Bruce was there spoil a good line. And we could always say he isn't one of the titans, anyway!) So it was very much a reduced and weakened Kenilworth contingent who turned up to do battle. But this could hardly be described as a vintage year for the event - numbers were down with just 24 players and Kenilworth still managed to provide seeds 2, 3 and 6 (me, Bruce and Rhys) plus Ben as number 12, after his blitz rating has been shredded by too many encounters with ferocious juniors.
But its not where you start that matters - its where you finish. And after 9 rounds of hectic competition the cup was returning home again to Kenilworth as I romped to victory (not a phrase which has been used many times) with 8.5 pts to finish 2 points clear of Jon Griffiths (Leamington) and top seed Andrew McCumiskey (Solihull). Bruce finished fourth on 6 pts and somehow qualified for a prize which was only 40p less than I got for winning. Someone will have to explain how that works to me sometime! Rhys was 6th (5.5 pts) and Ben 12th (5 pts), which meant that we all finished almost exactly in line with our starting rank.
A triumph for the oldies - 71 year old beats 65 year old beats 60 year old beats 60 year old!
This is my third triumph in this event, though I suspect I had to play a lot better to win the other two times, when the entry list was undoubtedly stronger. But at my time of life I'll take whatever I can get. I am now tied with Javier as the winning most Kenilworth player, though as one of his victories was shared, I should edge first place on tie break! We'll gloss over the fact that his 3 wins have come from only 3 attempts, whereas mine have come from at least 20, with the other winning years in 2010 and 2018. So I can expect to win again in 2034 to keep the sequence going! (For those interested, the only other Kenilworth winners have been Bernard (1988) and Carl Pickering (2008)).
Before anyone asks, the quality of the games was what you might expect for Blitz between not very good players! I was under pressure from Bruce and lost the exchange, before the clock got the better of him and he allowed my heavy pieces onto his back rank to deliver mate. And against Rhys I completely missed the fact that he was threatening Qxf2 check, and it was only by luck it wasn't terminal. Fortunately I avoided Ben, as he gave me a right going over in the Club Championship last summer!
I'm not proud - I don't mind that I only won because Javier decided not to play. I know I was a substitute for another guy. Cue the music!!
Quite an interesting night at Solihull on Wednesday. In what may be a first for the Leamington League, Kenilworth A's final league match of the season (completely unimportant) doubled up (with the addition of a fifth board) as the Open KO Cup semi-final (totally crucial). Fixture congestion for both teams prevented us finding an independent date for the Cup match, but a bit of inspired out of the box thinking (modesty precludes me from telling you it was my idea) and some much appreciated understanding from the league committee, allowed us to shoe-horn two matches into one night.
Despite a fairly ordinary league campaign, Solihull can put out a pretty strong team when all their players are available, so we needed a powerful quintet to repel the challenge. Thankfully we had exactly that, and ran out 4.5-0.5 winners of the cup match, and 3.5-0.5 winners over the top 4 boards for the league points.
As in seemingly all matches these days, it felt pretty tense and very much in the balance for the initial phase of the evening, but as the clock approached 22.00 things turned decisively in our favour. When the going got tough, our guys got going! When England played a match against China in Liverpool in 2008 (6 rounds of 8 boards), the games kept swinging in China's favour (they won 28-20) during the fifth hour of play. To such an extent that this period was christened "The Chinese Hour". We're not quite in the same league as that Chinese team (Wang Yue, Ni Hua, Bu Xiangzhi, Hou Yifan etc), but - last night at least - we definitely mustered a "Kenilworth Half Hour".
The one person who didn't really contribute to this was Andrew, but only because he had already won after a very polished performance with the Black pieces against Ray Carpenter on Board 4. Not only did he win a pawn, but the extra pawn was passed and on f3 tying down the White pieces. A nifty rook manoeuvre won a second pawn to give connected passed g and f pawns, and while Ray was able to reach a minor piece ending and set up a blockade with his king and knight to prevent the further advance of these pawns, Andrew then started a king march towards the wide open White queen side pawns. In an impossible position Ray lost on time.
Earlier I had been initially optimistic about Javier's position on Board 2 against Andrew McCumiskey, especially as he won a clear centre pawn and doubled the White g pawns. But this had come at the cost of weakening his own kingside, so that he had to castle long. Andrew then uncorked a very nice knight sac which couldn't be taken, and when the combinational smoke cleared the extra pawn had gone and White looked to be pressing against some weak Black pawns. But Javier kept his cool - marching his king down to b3; installing a rook on c2 and threatening to break decisively in the centre with an e4 push that would have created a monster passed pawn on d4. Andrew could have kept some chances of holding the position if he had swapped a pair of rooks off, but failing to do this, Javier doubled rooks on the c file and suddenly - from almost nowhere - it was unstoppable mate! The Kenilworth Half-Hour was up and running!
And then the big match up on Board 1 between Jude and Don Mason also resolved itself after a very interesting, and pretty high level, encounter. Don played very actively and seemed to have an initiative, but Jude first shored up his position and then started jumping into some good squares with threats against some weak Black pawns. He eventually won a pawn and with his time about to expire Don couldn't find a way to continue and resigned. It was apparently not yet a completely won position for Jude, but with the extra pawn and extra time there could only have been one winner.
So that meant we were home and dry, with a 3-0 lead in both the league and cup matches. Keatan was pushing hard to chalk up another win against Akshath Shivakumar on Board 4 and tried everything possible to engineer a breakthrough in a knight ending, where he had just a slight space advantage in a near symmetrical position. But there was simply no way to create a passed pawn or infiltrate with the king or knight and he had to reluctantly agree to a draw.
This left Bruce in action against Julian Summerfield on Board 5, in a game which was something of a slow burner. But as the time control approached Bruce went for the jugular with a king side attack. His queen jumped in to the Black position and it became extremely difficult for Julian to hold the defence together. Despite terrible time pressure he managed to neutralise the direct attack, but only at the cost of a seemingly irrelevant (to me) pawn on a6. But in fact it was exceedingly relevant, because a couple of moves later a White pawn got to a7 and shortly after - once Bruce had made sure not to allow even a glimpse of a perpetual check escape - it cost Black a whole rook when it went one square further. Tense, hair raising stuff - but once again the Kenilworth Half Hour had worked its magic!
This double victory meant we finished 8 points clear of Warwick University in Division 1, for a sixth successive league title. Unfortunately the students finished the season - as I had suspected they would - by winning against Olton and Leamington on successive nights (by a score of 7.5-0.5!) to pip our B team to second place on game points. In the Cup, we will be going for a sixth successive victory against Leamington on finals night at Olton on May 12th. When Ben's u-8750 team will be attempting to make it three wins in a row.
It only remains to choose this week's musical offering. Something dynamic and upbeat, I think, to reflect my mood. And you can't get much more upbeat than this. Absolutely brilliant. Can music be any more uplifting and life affirming? Who wouldn't want to be a rock star after seeing this?!
History was made at the Holiday Inn on Monday night, when the latest graduate from Paul's Coventry Chess Academy made his debut for KCC in the D team match against Leamington C. At around 6 years and 10 months of age, Anish Bijibilla took the step into the world of adult league chess with supreme ease, wrapping up a win over a 1327 rated opponent in under an hour and becoming the youngest ever player to win a game for Kenilworth! (And at the other end of the age spectrum, a stalwart of the CCA, Roy, was contributing the other point to the team in a 2-2 draw. Perfect symmetry!)
Anish gets ready to make his first move for Kenilworth, with comparative veteran Gregory in the background!
So sorry Billy, your record as our youngest winner, which stood at just over 7 years of age and has lasted since December 2018 when you were successful against Stratford D in Division 4, has been broken. (Which presumably means Jude has been pushed down to number 3!) I would be very surprised if there has been a younger winner for any other club in the history of the Leamington League - and especially not in Division 3.
Anish has had a fantastic couple of weeks, first scoring 6/7 in the Minor section of the Birmingham Rapid Play (including a win over LDCL veteran Kim Gilbert of Shirley who was born in 1945! - how's that for an age difference?!) and then just last weekend making 3/5 at the Nottingham Minor (standard play) against players all rated over 1400. No wonder Paul thought that Anish was ready for a competitive debut in the league - and how right he was.
On the April ECF rating list Anish is the second ranked U-7 in England for both standard play and rapid play, and third for blitz, and when the above results are taken into account that could well change. Its no wonder that he has been selected to play for England in the World Cadet U-8s in Georgia later in the year (where he will begiving away a year to most of his opponents).
It is a great pleasure and privilege for us to have Anish playing for KCC and I'm sure we all hope he will have a long and enjoyable time with our club. And he's a really nice lad as well! So a big Kenilworth welcome to him and his dad Nanda, and the rest of the family, and best wishes for what promises to be a very exciting chess journey.
Kenilworth C went down 0-4 away to Solihull A last night, in our final league game of the season. We had already long since been relegated, and you might think this heavy defeat was a cause for further lament, but I don't see it like that. It was always going to be a challenge for our third team to take on rival first teams, and that all too often proved to be the case.
Yet we'd earned our place in the top league on merit, by winning the Division 2 title in style last year. This season we struggled to always get our best team out, for a variety of completely understandable reasons. But I am immensely grateful to everyone who did play the games. There must have been times (like last night) when players turned out knowing that they were going to be heavily outgraded, but nobody hid and you can't ask for more than that.
Albeit, we could perhaps have hoped that our own B team might have demonstrated some of the same enthusiasm they showed in beating us, instead of then losing limply to our relegation rivals a few days later, but that's chess. You can never quite predict what is going to happen, and ultimately when the clock starts it is every man (and woman) for themselves. The truth is we weren't quite good enough and there is no shame in that.
One of my most heart-breaking moments in football was when Man Utd lost the League title to Leeds in 1992. In their next game, which was then a dead rubber against Spurs, Man Utd won (3-1 I think.) The newspaper report said, it hurts now for Man Utd fans, but the future looks bright. A somewhat prescient comment to say the least! So many of the C team players have improved during the season and I really think we are in great shape for next year.
Rhys had a great game against Don last night. I didn't see much of Dan and Dylan's games, but the pair of them epitomise our growing strength in depth. The truth is I didn't see much of anything, as my own game was an unmitigated disaster. I walked into an opening trap and that was that. I said to Mark the other day that I am aiming to be much more philosophical about chess these days. So, while I can't quite say that I laughed, I'm not dwelling on it either. After all, when you've got the worst game you've ever played behind you, the only way is up, right?!?
There are plenty more games to follow. Both for me personally, and for the C team next season. We will be back in Division 2 next year. Doubtless there will be more drama. Good days and bad days. New opportunities to chase down. One way or another, there is every reason to think that we will have a lot more to smile about.
Well, thank goodness that's the end of the season for the B team and I can be done with all that B nonsense in the match report titles. Until next season, I imagine, when I find it hard to imagine I will have any better idea than to repeat my previous theme. But that can wait, because there is the little matter of last night's match to round-up first.
We went to Stratford (birthplace of the Bard, who was something of a master of deliberate bathos) seeking the one point which would secure second place in the table, but we returned home with none, and now have to wait for Warwick University to play their final two matches. If they win both they will overtake us. Its out of our hands now, so what will be, will be.
We were off to a flyer last night, when Richard McNally made a terrible blunder against me, and in a totally innocuous position walked into a deadly pin which should have cost the exchange and a pawn, but as played cost him his queen for a rook. When I returned the queen for an ending with two pieces against one, Richard resigned after just 80 minutes and 21 moves.
Things certainly looked bright elsewhere, because Mike was outplaying Carl Hibbard on Board 2 and Ben was at least equal on 3. Daniel was under some pressure on Board 4, but it didn't seem especially serious. But first Mike's game ended in a draw, as Carl just about held his position together without dropping any material, and then things started to go pear shaped on the other two boards. Tantalisingly we just needed a draw from the two games to clinch second spot, but it wasn't to be. For no obvious reason, Ben's position drifted depressingly into a lost rook and pawn ending against Alexander Roberts, when it looked like a nailed on draw and then disaster struck on Board 4. Dan was under pressure on the clock, but it was his opponent, George Clifton, who made a massive oversight which gifted Dan a piece thanks to a back rank trick. But the clock situation proved decisive, and instead of pocketing a whole piece Dan missed the winning move and instead found himself mated about three moves later! Sic transit gloria mundi. Or something like that.
In the overall scheme of things it won't matter too much whether the B team finishes second or third, as this has still been a massively successful season for our second team. But it would be nicer to be second, don't you think?! So, a rather anticlimactic finish to the season after the peak performance last week against Banbury A. Hence the title of this report!
I think a shot of the blues is called for to reflect my subdued mood today. So it has to be the Allman Brothers again!
A great win for the B team away against a full strength Banbury A last Thursday, which completed a remarkable league double for the season. It hasn't quite wrapped up 2nd place for the B team, but its taken us right to the brink of a second 1-2 finish in the league.
And there was no question that we deserved the victory (I say we, because I was in the team!), as we never looked to be losing at any stage of the evening. Although the scoreboard got moving in the wrong direction to begin with. Andy repeated his recent trick of getting a winning position out of the opening, and then collapsing due to a tactical oversight. This time the beneficiary was Georgs Vikanis, as Andy's extra pawn became irrelevant when the Black heavy pieces invaded the White kingside in a distinctly vicious manner. But the accident on Board 3 was about to be balanced by a reverse slip-up on Board 2 which went very much in our favour. Joshua played a very enterprising opening against Tom Day, sacking an exchange for some very threatening looking connected pawns. Tom decided that discretion was the better part of valour and gave the exchange back to eliminate the connected pawns, and for some unfathomable reason Josh failed to take the fat, juicy White e pawn in return. So he was just a pawn down. But then the legendary Pink magic (or is it luck?) kicked in and the next thing you know, Tom has dropped a whole piece. Joshua's technique in winning with rook, knight and three against rook and three wasn't the best I've ever seen, but it was good enough in the end to queen the last remaining pawn and level the match scores.
And then we were in the driving seat when Mike, who has also been having a rocky time of things over the last few matches, played a very powerful game with the Black pieces to overcome Gary Jackson. Indeed, White looked almost totally busted straight out of the opening with his king wandering around in the centre and Black having very active pieces and a big central pawn. I missed the middlegame phase, but it eventually came down to a double rook ending with Mike a couple of pawns up and when he got a pawn to the seventh rank, Gary had to concede. Which put us 2-1 up, and in possession of at least one match point, with my game against IM James Jackson deciding whether we got both.
Now normally you'd bet long odds on that I would lose, but this was one of those nights (song clue there, by the way!) where I managed to avoid any blunders or major inaccuracies. James sacked a pawn in a line of the Spanish that was completely new to me, and got some play for it, but the engine says I was much better, even when I mistakenly simplified the position, leaving him with a rook and a pair of bishops against my rook, bishop and knight. I still had my extra pawn - passed! - though it was sat on a2, so had a long way to go before it became a factor in the game. I defended sensibly, but as time pressure grew, James started ramping up the pressure and managed to open the position for his two bishops and get himself a passed h pawn. But I defended quite well, and although I eventually lost all my advantage the position was never worse than equal - and I still had an extra pawn - as he also ran short of time. And then he prodded his passed pawn one square too far and with the aid of some elementary tactics I was suddenly completely winning. I suspected as much, but had too little time to calculate things. I saw a way to eliminate all the Black pawns and draw and just headed for the safe solution to win the match.
A brilliant win for the B team, then. One point at Stratford in our final match of the season will seal second place, as Warwick University could still overtake us on game points if they win their last two matches. But its third place as a minimum for the B team, after a splendid season.
So did you guess the song? Not that it matters, coz' here it is anyway!
Well, maybe not anything. Like winning the League. But when it comes to beating Olton A, then its definitely the B team that takes the biscuit! Because after the A team's rather unfortunate accident away at Olton a couple of weeks back, the B team hardly broke sweat in chalking up a 3-1 win against exactly the same Olton A team last Tuesday.
Bruce "Bruiser" Baer was particularly brutal, winning a whole piece in broad daylight with Black against Mark Cundy, and forcing resignation shortly afterwards. I imagine he was back home in plenty of time to watch the 9 o'clock news. Especially as its not on till 10 o'clock these days. Andy had been the chief culprit in the A team's loss, frittering away a totally won position against Mike Hollier, but he made no mistake when offered the chance of revenge. Once again he got a won position surprisingly quickly (two pieces for a rook) and this time he made the advantage count. Although Mike managed to check Andy's king around the board for a few moves, by this stage he was a whole 2 pieces down and as soon as the checks stopped it was game over.
I then made it 3-0 on the night in rather strange circumstances. Believe it or not, I actually played a rather good game against Alan Lloyd on top board, after Alan had blundered a pawn in the opening. In order to break a mini-blockade, I correctly sacrificed the exchange, but gained a second pawn in the process. And one of them was a monster passed pawn on b6 that was straining at the leash to get to b7 and b8. Alan defended as well as he could, but he was completely lost ....... when I allowed him the chance to return the exchange and enter a king and pawn ending a pawn down which, as far as I can tell, would have been a draw. But - just like me! - he didn't notice this possibility and instead resigned. Ultimately a lucky point for me, but I felt I deserved it. And as I'm writing the match report, that's the opinion that counts! Unfortunately, we couldn't make it 4-0, as Mike went horribly wrong against Richard Liszewski in what looked like a favourable position and managed to lose his queen for a rook. Quite a few fairly pointless moves later the inevitable happened and Mike was forced to resign.
With Banbury A winning on the same night, its still all to play for in the fight for second place in Division 1, and next week's direct encounter between the two teams may well decide the final outcome - though the B team does have one more match after that, away at Stratford.
This week's song was somewhat telegraphed by the title, so no prizes for guessing we're taking a trip to the golden age of the Hollywood musical. Not our normal cup of tea, but I like to cater for all tastes!
Don't worry - I haven't suddenly developed an interest in poker (as if!). Its just that last night we had a rather full house in the Jephson Room, as the U8750 Cup semi-final against Leamington (5 boards) and an A team league match against Stratford A (4 boards) combined to create quite a rather full room.
And the intense atmosphere clearly did our teams no harm, as we came away with two clear cut victories. As I was present in a non-playing capacity, I had rather a good view of proceedings - at least for the last hour, as before then I had adopted a hands-off approach and retreated to the bar for a chat with Nash and Richard.
My return to the action was not in time to see any of Josh's game, though, as he had won in double quick time for the A team on Board 4 and already departed the scene. Good to see the legendary Pink Points Machine back in full working order! Javier, making his first appearance at the Holiday Inn (which might - just - excuse him for going to the Abbey Club first. No, on reflection it doesn't!) performed a massive hatchet job on Richard McNally's usually very potent Morra Gambit and didn't take long to make an extra piece tell, for a very convincing win. But things weren't necessarily going to plan on the other two boards, so the match win wasn't totally assured. However, I needn't have worried as things turned decisively in our favour as the clocks ticked down. First, Andrew found a very nice way to force a repetition on Board 3 and escape from a pawn down ending with a draw, and then Keatan went one better by producing a monster knight fork to win Carl Hibbard's rook after a very tense struggle where the momentum seemed to be going to and fro at varying moments. Which meant a 3.5-0.5 victory and a 10 point lead at the top of Division 1. And a massive game points score of +36 - just the 23 more than the next best score!
But with the league title already secured, the bigger match last night was the cup semi-final. Ben's team was already missing a couple of players and then had to cope with a late withdrawal as well, but thankfully the assembled team rose to the occasion and produced a really splendid effort. It was far from plain sailing, of course, and for much of the evening it looked possible that we would be going out. Even very close to the finishing line we could still have been eliminated on tie break, but thankfully it didn't come to that.
Our only loss on the night came on board 3, where Phil succumbed to a massive attack targeted at his king. White lined up queen and bishop on the a1-h7 diagonal and two rooks on an open g file - and with everything pointing at the g7 square there was no defence. Thankfully we bounced back when Patrick secured an excellent win on Board 5 with Black. I missed the end, but earlier he had won an exchange and looked set to start picking off pawns and exposing the White king in last viewing. And then we were in the lead when Ben played an excellent game against Joshua Simpson on Board 2, winning a piece and setting up a mating attack. Though disappointingly he didn't deliver mate and won on material instead!
But despite it being advantage Kenilworth, it was still all to play for. Dylan looked to have walked into a vicious pin and attack on Board 4, but he kept his cool and found a way to stave off immediate disaster at the cost of a pawn, and then sacrificed an exchange which soon led to a draw by perpetual. I wasn't sure if it should have, but I wouldn't trust my analysis too much! Anyway, it was all irrelevant as this was a crucial half point saved. We now led by 2.5-1.5, with just Rhys' game against Ben Egid on Board 1 left in play. A Leamington win and they would go through on tie break. White seemed to be pressing with doubled rooks on the open d file, but Rhys had challenged these and also covered possible entry squares. Much more significant, though, was White's dreadful light squared bishop and a rapidly evaporating time allowance. Rhys jumped in on the dark squares tro win a pawn, and then refrained from winning a second in favour of keeping the queens on, so that White had to worry about a possible mating attack. The defensive task proved too much and the clock took over to finish the game in our favour. A tremendous win for Rhys - with Black - against Leamington A's regular board 1.
So many congratulations to both teams on a double triumph, but no doubt that the major honours go to the U8750 cup team for securing our first cup final appearance of the season. The Open KO team is still hoping to join them, though we have a few weeks to go yet before a semi-final against Solihull.
Onto the music - and after being in such a crowded room last night, the selection of our group seemed pretty obvious to me!
