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.