Once again we are indebted to our roving reporter/non-playing captain Roy Watson, for a blow by blow account of last night's U-1600 Cup Semi-Final match, between Kenilworth and Shirley.
This was the semi-final! Us at home. I have to be upfront and confess my grasp of the games was perhaps not entirely sound so I do apologise to our players if I have assessed their games inadequately. By the time all four games had reached the early middle game I could not really tell what was happening but my feeling was that Shirley had a slight edge overall.
Next time I came in to watch Steph on board four (as White, playing Roger Ball) was a couple of pawns down (I think four v six) and with a knight v bishop. Sadly, Steph missed a simple fork winning the bishop and almost certainly the game. 0-1.
At this stage Harry's position (board one, Black, against John Asbury) was not good but holdable, Keatan (board two, White, against David Cotterell) was definitely struggling but relative newcomer George (board three, Black, against Kim Gilbert) was doing well.
In the last few minutes of the match Harry's opponent blundered a rook and resigned, (1-1) George was three pawns up and won (2-1) and Keatan also manage to pull one out of the hat (3-1). It seems that Keatan's opponent spent a lot of time thinking (and in my experience that is always a recipe for disaster in chess!) in what seemed to me a winning position and fell a long way behind on time and indeed lost on time!
Well done lads and lasses, and Kenilworth will now play Daventry in the final of the U-1600 Cup at Olton on Tuesday May 16th, when we will also be taking on Shirley in the Open KO Cup Final. Regrettably our U-8750 team failed to make it past round 1, having mounted no sort of defence of the Cup it won so dramatically last season, so we haven't matched our 2022 feat of getting a team to each of the 3 cup finals.
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