Kids and Caissa to the Rescue

Sometimes it all comes down to luck. We naturally tend to think we get more bad luck than good, but that doesn't mean it always has to be like that. As Thursday night at Solihull proved. The task ahead of us was quite simple - win and Kenilworth A would clinch a fifth consecutive Division 1 title. But drop a point or, heaven forbid, two and we would likely be overtaken by Banbury A. Despite missing both Jude and Javier our super-sub captain had managed to assemble a pretty good team, and with Solihull missing regular Board 1 Don Mason (get well soon, Don) we looked in good shape to get the 2.5 game points we needed. But while our youthful boards 1 and 2, Billy (on his A team Board 1 debut) and Keatan, did exactly what was needed and scored good wins over Ray Carpenter and Julian Summerfield respectively, the more mature members of the team had a torrid time of things. It looked like they could not handle the pressure. Cue song number 1!

Andrew lost an important pawn on c6 right out of the opening against Solihull's own junior star, Akshath Shivakumar and faced a long and decidedly uphill struggle to get anything out of the game from a very early stage. I was sat next to him playing Tony Sadler and after a rope-a-dope opening Tony hit out at my big pawn centre with an f5 break. It got quite exciting and very good for me, especially when I jumped into f6 with a knight. But the very next move I overlooked a move that sent my queen away from defending the advanced knight and suddenly it just dropped off the board and I was completely lost. Andrew, meanwhile, had staged a bit of a rearguard action  and was desperately trying to hold on in a rook ending a pawn down. Thankfully Billy and Keatan had by now already won after very efficient and powerful games so we just needed half a point from the two old codgers on the bottom two boards to get over the line. But could we get it?

The answer, amazingly, was yes! Because Caissa, the goddess of chess, rather fortunately for us had decided to fly over Solihull on this particular night and - even more fortuitously - drop down a scattering of lucky dust that by total chance landed on me. Blessed by this good fortune it was indeed the case that we could do the impossible! Cue song number 2.

In a truly desperate position I sacked a rook to open up the Black king but it shouldn't have worked. But after just a couple of moves Tony managed to completely overlook my one move threat of mate and we had got our third crucial game point and the title was won. Just as well, since Andrew's defensive efforts ultimately came up short, giving Akshath his second win on successive nights against Kenilworth teams.

I felt completely exhausted by the events of the evening and not a little embarrassed by my disastrous blunder which turned a +4 position into -4. Thank goodness for Caissa's intervention.  And thank goodness for our two juniors. I think we can all agree that as far as KCC is concerned, the kids are alright! Cue song number 3.

At some stage I'll check the history books and see if any club before us has also managed 5 consecutive Division 1 titles - so far I've discovered one example of 4 by Leamington (1965-68), but I need to unearth the records for the years since 1996 to see whether either Stratford or Olton, who both enjoyed periods of some dominance, managed to equal or improve on this. Fingers crossed that we are the first!