KCC Routed in 50th Anniversary Celebration Simul!

It was a great day for the club yesterday, when we hosted a simultaneous display from England's legendary Super GM and 8 time British Champion, Mickey Adams. Well, it was a great day in every respect except the score, as Mickey turned on the turbo chargers to leave us losers by a score of 28.5-0.5! Massive congratulations to Andy Ward for preventing the clean sweep and retaining just a bit of dignity for the club!  In the end there were 22 KCC participants, as Dhairya was unable to get to the venue in time from a football match, plus 7 of Paul's most promising students from the Coventry Chess Academy, who we were delighted to invite to join us. With none older than 11, and three of them only 5 (yes, 5!!) it was something of a baptism of fire to be playing a man once ranked 4th in the world - behind only present/future World Champions Kasparov, Kramnik and Anand! - but they all did themselves and the CCA proud with both their play and their behaviour.

And, as you can tell from the score, it was no better for the older and more experienced KCC contingent. We had managed to bring in 2 of our big guns, Jude and Javier, to fill the top boards and - surely - put us on the scoreboard, but regrettably these were 2 big guns who were only able to fire blanks and were readily put away by the GM. Andy B dropped a pawn early on Board 3 and despite determined play inevitably went down to defeat. I thought I was doing rather well (+1.8 at one point!!) but got well outplayed at the critical moment and ended up in a mating net where my extra piece was not much consolation. On Board 5 Keatan got into a big tactical melee which looked quite promising, but Mickey had seen a bit further and when the fireworks finished he was a pawn ahead and inevitably winning.

I failed to see much of anybody else's games, and while I have collected all/most of the score sheets, I haven't had a chance to play through them yet. (Watch this space - I'm sure that some of the games will feature on the Blog in due course.) At the very end it was only Mike and Algis left, but Mike was powerless to stop Mickey promoting to a second queen, while Algis - the last man sitting - had to concede as a central pawn push destroyed his position and won material.

So full marks and maximum kudos to Andy who, together with Ilyas from the CCA juniors, won a best game prize, selected by Mickey, and each received a signed copy of his ECF Book of the Year, Think Like a Super Grand Master. (Shame none of us read this before the simul!) Naturally, you will want to see how you go about drawing against a Super GM, so here's the game. The Lichess Stockfish tells me that Mickey played at 94% accuracy and Andy at 95%! Impressive or what?! 

Just like Julius Caesar, Mickey would be well entitled to say, "Veni! Vidi! Vici!". So many congratulations to our visiting GM, who was a very friendly and engaging guest - and a frighteningly strong chess player. If Jude, Billy or Keatan can't win the English Championship in Kenilworth in July, I hope its Mickey who can regain the crown he last won in 2023 and only relinquished to Gawain Jones in a play off last year. I should have asked him what piece of music he would like to accompany this article, but as I didn't he'll have to make do with my choice. Looking at the results list it seems to me that there was indeed, from a KCC perspective, "too much blood on the page" (and also "on the Page!"), so I'll let The Gaslight Anthem play us out, in what is only their second ever appearance here.

Trophies Galore

At last week's Leamington League AGM it was raining, not men, but silverware and trophies on KCC. As well as 4 team awards, there were also 3 individual prizes. And just to prove it, here is a picture of them all together for what is probably the only time.

3 humans: (l-r) Andy Ward, Ben Graff, Mark Page
7 trophies: Back (l-r) Division 2, Division 1  Front (l-r) Best Game (Andy W), U8750 Cup, Open KO Cup, Blitz Champion (Javier), Blitz Intermediate (Keatan)

By the way, you can replay Andy's splendid prize winning game (as judged by National Master Don Mason) here. 

Now I bet you all thought you'd guessed what the song would be from the very first line of this report - and that was, indeed, my intention. But my super-new video list has now told me that I've used it before. So hurriedly I've had to go to Plan B. Very tenuous, but its the best I could come up with at short notice. It's got the word silver in, so that will have to do! (The alternatives were David Soul or David Essex who just don't cut it as far as I'm concerned!) Probably a bit too country for some of you, but we're here to cater for all tastes. The rock 'n roll will surely be back next time!

A nice rendition by Poco, but even better, in my opinion, is the original by Gram Parsons. But why don't you decide?

Never Mind the Chess - What About the Music??

As far as I can tell, the first music video to appear on the KCC website appeared on December 20, 2017. It was Tina Turner singing "We don't need another hero". But don't bother going back to try and find it, as the video has subsequently been deleted from YouTube, so no longer appears on our Blog. Little did I realise, when I first discovered how to embed videos into a web post, that the selection of music would become such a big part of the KCC Blog. My semi-scientific research (scrolling back for what seemed like ever through 7.5 years of posts) has revealed that there have in total been some 101 different artists featured across a total of 160 music videos.

You won't be surprised to learn that Bruce tops the table of most appearances. The Top 10 currently looks like this.

Bruce Springsteen        14*
Jackson Browne             9
Bob Dylan                      8
Little Feat                       5
The Kinks                       4
The Allman Brothers      3
Buffalo Springfield         3
The Byrds                       3
Mark Knopfler                3**

The Grateful Dead          3

* Plus 1 with Southside Johnny

** Plus 2 with Dire Straits

There are a further 14 artistes with 2 contributions, and 77 with a single appearance.

The Club Organiser has clearly been progressively losing his marbles, as several songs have appeared more than once by accident - though on a couple of occasions it has been done deliberately, most recently with Fairground Attraction's Perfect, in honour of a second 100% score by Javier at the LDCL Blitz Championships. Going Home, the theme from Local Hero, appeared 3 times in the same post (deliberately!) and Running on Empty by Jackson Browne has also featured 3 times though two of these have now disappeared, having been removed from YouTube. Now I have a list of all the videos, such accidental repetition shouldn't happen again. As long as I keep the list up to date, of course!

In my opinion the weirdest song to appear (so far!) was Charles Jolly's rendition of The Laughing Policeman, though if you want to hear it again you'll have to track it down yourselves as the Blog search function doesn't reference embedded videos. But also pretty weird was John Cage's 4'33" of absolute silence. Still, I prefer this to any of the contributions by Abba or Queen. Not my favourite groups!

Despite being of a certain age myself, I'm pleased to see that the Beatles and Rolling Stones have only managed one appearance each, with their combined score being beaten by both the Kinks and The Byrds, the two best 60's pop bands in my opinion.

But the most astonishing discovery I made going through the Blog's musical history is that one song - which should really have been the first ever - has never made an appearance. Until today. I could have included the live version recently witnessed by the Chairman and Club Organiser in Manchester, but that's an amateur production with very dodgy sound and this song deserves better. Much better. So wrap your ears around this. If its not the greatest rock song ever written, it must be pretty damn close! What a great way to start the second 160 KCC music videos.

We are the Champions! Open KO Cup!

Apologies for being a bit slow off the mark with a Cup Final report compared to Ben. But I've got here in the end, even if I have stolen his headline in the process.

And my goodness, what a performance I have to report. A fifth successive Open KO Cup for Kenilworth was secured on Tuesday (albeit spread over 7 years due to Covid!), when we beat Stratford 4.5-0.5 at Olton. This still leaves us some way behind Rugby's record 7 wins in a row, but as long as the run continues, there's always a chance we might get there! We have now won the Open KO Cup 11 times in total.

Having beaten Stratford A in our recent league match, we were bound to start favourites, as although we were missing Javier from that team, Captain Fantastic Andrew had managed to secure the services of Jude and Billy to make up for his absence. Not a bad trade, you'd have to say! What they lack in years they more than make up for in ability and rating! And as if that wasn't daunting enough, Stratford had the misfortune to be missing their top board, Ben Larkin, and to arrive with only 4 players. Consequently, all I had to do to claim the first point of the night was stay alive until 20.30, and thankfully I managed that.

The first real game to finish was on Board 2, where Jude overwhelmed David Gardner in what looked like a very convincing win - though he did confide in me afterwards that there was one moment where David could have made things considerably more difficult. But once this tactic was missed, Jude started collecting a lot of material and won quickly. Soon afterwards Andrew won against Richard Dobedoe on Board 5 to clinch the match. A Black bishop appeared on h5 attacking a White rook on f3, and unfortunately for Richard there was another White rook on d1, so he was just dropping an exchange. Rather than prolong the suffering he decided to resign on the spot.

Jude won too quickly for me to capture him in action! Billy, meanwhile, looks absolutely thrilled to be playing on Board 1

At which point I took this as my cue to depart for home, leaving Billy and Keatan both in action. Keatan's position against Alexander Roberts was looking rather ropey to me, as he was a pawn down without much/any compensation that I could see. But what do I know - not much later Nash messaged me to say that Keatan had drawn. In contrast, Billy, after a quiet opening with Black, had started to make inroads into Richard McNally's position on top board, posting a very dangerous looking bishop on e4 attacking a White king that was completely lacking any close pawn cover - the g pawn having disappeared and the f and h pawns having marched up the board. I don't know how Billy engineered the win, but it was no surprise to learn that he had found a way and wrapped up a very convincing win, which gave us our fourth consecutive Div 1/Open Cup double.

Keatan (top) thinking hard; The Invisible Man winning on Board 4; and Andrew getting ready to pounce on an upcoming oversight.

Our recent trophy record is getting to ridiculous proportions - it is now 17 trophies in the last 4 seasons with, I think, 15 of them coming in the Leamington League. Kenilworth may be the smallest place to have any teams in the League, but we can certainly punch above our weight! Which is a rather convoluted connection to our song of the week!

Congratulations to every one who played in our latest successful Cup campaign - 4.5-0.5 v Shirley; 5-0 (by default) against Coventry; and 4.5-0.5 against Stratford. 

We are the Champions! U8750 Cup!

 

The Winning Team: - (l-r) Dylan, Dan, Ben, Paul, Dhairya

In the beginning, there were five... This was more or less how I started a recent Chess Magazine article, which focussed on Frank Marshall. In Marshall's (historically dubious) telling of the story, there were originally five Grandmasters.  Just as the names of Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall will live forever in the chess world, future Kenilworth historians will doubtless want to acknowledge the efforts of Badger, Pandya, Graff, Davies and Bayliss in more or less the same breath.

We not only defended the U8750 Cup last night against Shirley, but also managed to do so having played the same team in every round. 

We started out with a 1-4 win away to Solihull on a cold January night. This had been followed by a nail-biting semi-final against Stratford in March, which we edged 2-3. Yesterday we were on the road again. All finals are at a neutral venue, and we lined up against Shirley in Olton.

 

The match was played in a really good spirit, with lots of friendships existing between the teams. As someone who plays for Shirley in the Birmingham League, I have reflected on the fact that the two biggest games of the season for the C and U8750 teams both came against the club (other than Kenilworth of course) that I most have a soft spot for and relationship with - but needs must. I'll get the drinks in when I attend the Shirley AGM!

I would love to be able to give a blow by blow account of all the games, but I can't, as my own battle was the last to finish. So I will share what I can... Things started exactly as they had last year, with me losing the toss. Dylan finished first with an excellent draw against Arnold Peace. It looked to have been very solid throughout. Last year Dylan was in the U1600 cup final team and his promotion and delivery at a higher level is testament to his progress. An excellent end to a great season.

Paul then went down on Board 1 against Darren Whitmore. It sounds like both players had their chances, and Darren is always a tough opponent. So a good struggle, but it meant that we were losing the match. I would like to thank Paul for all his efforts this season as he has been our key player on so many occasions, but this wasn't his night.

Dhairya rounded off his superb season by beating Keith Ingram on Board 2 to bring us level. We are so blessed with fantastic juniors and just like Dylan, Dhairya has grown and grown as the season has progressed. He really is a special talent. 

Dan has also been a revelation this year, and he did a great job of bringing the full point home against Kim Gilbert on Board 5. I am glad from a blood pressure perspective that I didn't see the end of this one, as Dan told me afterwards that he had been below 20 seconds at one point. But he got the job done, and Dan has been a major find for the club this year.

All of which meant that we were winning 2.5 - 1.5, but I needed to draw with Gordon Christie or we would lose on board count. I can't in all honesty say it was my best ever game. I wasn't happy with how I played the opening (although Fritz thinks it's OK) and I was certainly losing at one point. I dug deep and managed to completely turn the tables, not only beating back Gordon's attack but also picking up a pawn in the process. I seemed to be in full control, but it was Gordon's turn to play well. Fritz has highlighted that I did miss a win, but we were both below 3 minutes at that point, and even now I can see why a human would have played what I did, so I can't beat myself up too much. Ultimately we ended up knight and 3 (me) vs knight and 2 (Gordon) but all the pawns were on the same side of the board. I still had in my mind that I should win (because of the earlier position rather than what I had now, which Fritz scores as dead level), but clearly there was nothing doing. Even when Gordon offered me the draw I hesitated, but I certainly wouldn't have been happy if someone else turned down a  draw that would have won us the cup, so I took it. We were the U8750 Champions!

It's been a great team effort. Dan and Dhairya both scored 3/3 on our cup run. I also clocked in with 2.5/3, which is somewhat better than my contribution to last year's cup triumph when I lost in the semi-final and final. That's the beauty of chess, when things go wrong, there will always be another opportunity.

I'm so proud of our team, all of whom (along with others) also contributed to the C team success in the League. They say that it is better to travel than to arrive, and that's probably true, but let's enjoy the moment. I doubt we'll ever do a quadruple again, but next season will bring with it new opportunities and new adventures. So here's to that, and a bit of a holiday first, to contemplate all that we have delivered.

Stop Press: Kenilworth win Open and U8750 Cups, to complete historic quadruple!!

 Full match reports and details of the open-top bus parade through Kenilworth to follow...

Savour the moment. 

Division 1 Champions

Division 2 Champions

Open Cup Champions

U8750 Cup Champions

Get in!!

It's Deja Vu All Over Again, Again as KCC Dominate at the LDCL Blitz

Two years ago KCC managed a clean sweep of the podium at the annual LDCL Blitz Championship, as Javier led home myself and Bruce while posting a perfect 9/9 score. Last year our domination was slightly more muted, but Javier and Bruce still tied for the title, so it could hardly be called a failure. Jump forward to this year's event, held last night at Solihull, and it was almost as though we were back in 2023. Javier once again reeled off 9 successive wins to obliterate the field and I again followed at a respectable distance (7 pts), while this time round it was Keatan (6.5 pts) who completed the clean sweep. And Bruce (6 pts) then followed in 4th= place to make it an even more impressive night than 2 years ago. If Ben had won his last round he would also have finished 4th=, but as it was he had to settle for 9th= with 5 pts.

There were, unavoidably, plenty of intra-KCC encounters. Javier beat myself, Keatan and Bruce; I beat Bruce and Ben while losing to Keatan and Javier; Keatan beat me and Bruce but lost to Javi; Bruce beat Ben but lost to Javi, me and Keatan; and Ben did the decent thing and lost to me and Bruce!

32 players, but you'll have to make do with the top 23. 

As well as finishing third, Keatan also won the U-1800 prize (I know - what a bandit!) even though he should probably have been the number two seed. (This also kept this cup in KCC keeping, as Bernard won it last year!) Which meant that he got a cup to display and so, of course, did Javi, which left me looking like a bit left out in the post-event photo of the podium finishers!

They say blitz is a young person's game - so spot the outlier in this photo! Interestingly we finished in height order, but not in age order, which would have been my preferred sequence. As long as it was top down!

I wouldn't normally contemplate even for a moment repeating a musical selection here, but as its so apt I don't think I have much alternative. Indeed, this could well become an annual tradition the way things are going! So many congratulations to Javi on his third consecutive LDCL Blitz title. He was indeed just perfect.

Champions! We are going up!!!

 Last night saw our Division 2 showdown against Shirley B. We started the evening two points clear of Shirley, with a better (but not decisive) game point difference. Our task was clear. Win, draw or lose 1.5 - 2.5 and we would be champions. If Shirley won 3-1 or better, they would pip us to the post.

I had flown back from  the Menorca Open earlier in the day, somehow managing to miss all the power cut chaos in Spain. I did feel hopeful, as on paper I knew we had a great team. The thing with chess though is that you never know. We resolved to just play our games, but to keep a collective eye as to how the match was progressing. There is always a danger in overthinking these things.

The early play suggested that the night might not be entirely plain sailing. Dave seemed to be a fraction worse on Board 1 against Darren Whitmore, while Paul was really struggling against Owen Adams' Morra Gambit on Board 3. Yet Andy had a clear edge on Board 2 against Keith Ingram and my battle with Dave Thomas did not look like a game I was going to lose. So while not disastrous, the margins felt a little tight.

Time ticked on.

Andy led the way, picking up material and marching a pawn resolutely down the board. Meanwhile, I was a pawn up against Dave and with the better structure, but with opposite coloured bishops. Dave had turned down an early draw, yet when he offered me one now I hesitated. In normal circumstances I would have played it out, as it felt risk free (post-game analysis showed it was all a touch more complicated) but instead I waited and watched Andy's game while my clock ran down. 

Andy had crystalised his position and was a pawn up in a king and pawn endgame. It was impossible for Keith to defend on both sides of the board. I did not have enough time left on my clock for Andy to actually complete the win, but I was very confident that he would, so I took the draw.

A few minutes later Andy had won and we had the one and a half points that we needed to win the title! The evening got even better when Dave, who has done a fantastic job for us, exploited an error from Darren to give us victory in the match itself with a fine win.

Sadly Paul could not hold off Owen but it did not matter - Paul has won us plenty of other matches this season - and we had got the job done!

We had a drink with the Shirley players (including Gordon and Arnold who had been very welcome spectators) in the bar afterwards to collectively reflect on a season now done. Ultimately we had won the title by four points, having beaten Shirley in both our individual matches, and also held off the season long challenge from Coventry.

Next year will bring us an opportunity in Division 1 - we have earnt the chance to show what we can do. These are such exciting times for Kenilworth and truly a golden age for our teams.

A huge thank you to all who have played for the team this season. We've used 12 players and everyone has made a contribution at crucial moments. Our final stats for the year are...

Paul 6/11

Andy 5/11

Ben 7.5/10

Harry 5/8

Dave 3.5/ 5

Rhys 2.5/5

Bernard 2/3

Michal 2/3

Dhairya 2/2

Mike 1.5/2

Dan 1/1

Dylan 1/1

Here's to next season - albeit some of us will be trying to add cup glory to our League success before May is out!

Stop Press: Kenilworth C Division 2 Champions and Promoted to Division 1!

Our 2.5 - 1.5 victory against Shirley tonight means that we've done it!!! Full report to follow in due course...

Game of the Month - April 2025 (#2!)

Well, this is a first. Two Games of the Month in the same month, when we're typically lucky to get two in a year. But what can you do when one's inbox over-floweth with splendid offerings?

One of the big plusses for the club this season, when people were dropping like flies or heading for the hills, was the return to regular action of Andy Ward. While this further complicates matters by having 3 Andrews/Andys to differentiate, its a small price to play for the return of a strong player who has played a massive part in the C team's promotion challenge. Our game, though, somes from a recent Division 1 match against Olton A, when a somewhat under-strength Kenilworth B managed to win despite only turning up with 3 players! This was one of the decisive games that saw us overcome our numerical deficiency and secure a third place league position. Not quite matching last season's 2nd place finish for the B team, but probably an even better effort in view of our loss of players for much of the season. I don't suppose those of us in the A team will ever be allowed to forget that we managed to score just a single match point against the B team this season, and suffered our biggest drubbing (0.5-3.5) for many a year in the first encounter.

But back to the Game of the Month, and here - with Andy's own comments - is Andy's excellent victory over Richard Liszewski, who must be sick of the sight of Kenilworth players, having also lost to Bruce and myself earlier in the season. Here Black gets slowly strangled as Andy takes full advantage of some rather passive play by Richard, which ends up with Black having the worst pair of rooks you could ever see, and his light squared bishop is not much better. At the end, Andy is only a pawn up, but the Black rooks and king are so badly placed that it is impossible to avoid massive material loss. This was a very smooth and well controlled game by Andy. Black never seemed to have a chance!