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.
