Flowerpot Men to the Rescue!

No sooner has an errant spider had a starring role in a KCC match report, than a fondly remembered (by me, at least) duo of TV puppets from the 1950s and 60s also make an appearance on our unpredictable website! Who knows what's coming next?

Bill and Ben, The Flowerpot Men, with Little Weed

Last Monday the Flowerpot Men played a decisive role in the A team's narrow win over Olton A. With Mike drawing against Gary Hope on Board 3 after getting an initially promising early middle game position and Joshua going down in flames against Mark Cundy's Sveshnikov Sicilian on Board 2 (even Javier got nowhere against him in this variation a year or two back), we needed rescuing from the brink of disaster. Step forward the Flowerpot Men - Bill(y) and Ben!

Hopefully some of you remember the key question that was asked in every episode of the Flowerpot Men, after they'd got up to some mischief - "Was it Bill or was it Ben?"

Well, in this case it was both of them!

Billy - fresh from playing 5 on-line blitz games against Hikaru Nakamura! - had already kicked off proceedings by delivering a powerful attack, crowned by a rook sac and a checkmating finish, against Alan Lloyd on Board 1. For much of the game Alan, playing White, had a knight on a1 and he then tripled his heavy pieces on the b file aiming at Billy's pawn on b6, Meanwhile Billy had levered open the White king's position, and the sad monarch was quite alone and defenceless when a rook sac on f3 was followed by Qh3+ and Qe3+ with mate to follow. A very vigorous display!

Which meant it all came down to Ben's game on Board 4 against Richard Liszewski. I was slightly nervous when he ended up with two knights against two bishops, but pretty soon after he won a pawn, swapped off one pair of minor pieces and all the heavy pieces, and establsihed a passed pawn on f7 which completely tied down the Black king. Result! Ben's king was then free to wander over to the queenside and pick off another pawn while the Black bishop watched on helplessly. In the final position Ben had 3 pawns against none and Richard had no choice but to resign. Phew! Excellent technique by Ben, except for the fleeting suspicion that he might have allowed a threefold repetition at one point! But it wasn't claimed - and it may not have happened anyway - so we can't be worrying about that!

Many thanks to the Flowerpot Men, then, while there's little doubt as to which team member took on the role of Little Weed in this match! 

Music time. And its a classic!

That's it from me, but the final word (in their gibberish language, Oddle-Poddle) can go to the Flowerpot Men. Flobalob! I think we can agree, it makes as much sense as most of the stuff I write.

The Late No-Show

Its all go at KCC at the moment, and I'm afraid I've immediately had to bump Ben's justifiably proud report of our U8750 Cup triumph off the top of the page. And with a B team match tonight, even this article is not likely to enjoy top billing for a very long.

There was late panic for the captain ahead of last night's A team match away at Leamington, when Jude had to withdraw from the team after catching a nasty dose of the dreaded lurgi. (Get well soon, Jude!) But the captain himself was available to step into the breach (after a suitable change of board order) and a full complement eventually assembled at the Leamington Tennis Club. Despite the considerable down-grading of our playing strength with my inclusion, we found Leamington were also afflicted by absences, and as the match started we were clear rating favourites - with just an average 250 points superiority per board! We may not have made full use of this, but the team still got the job done by coming away with a 3-1 victory. Though as always, there was plenty of excitement along the way.

Bruce was the last to arrive (SatNav confusions) and the first to finish. Having just turned down a draw offer from Ben Egid on Board 2 (despite standing worse according to my untutored eye) he then returned the offer just a few minutes later, having realised his bravado in playing on was probably misplaced. His position hadn't improved at all and I suspect he was well pleased when Ben accepted. Especially as he was immediately able to adjourn to the bar for the post-mortem (and to watch the Arsenal game on TV!)

My new found habit of quick games then showed itself again, when in a very complex position Christopher Ward (no, not that one!) made a massive oversight and walked into a pin of his queen by my bishop. This had been a very interesting game where I had been relying on my knowledge of a 1956 game of Paul Keres to justify an early pawn sac. Needless to say, by memory/knowledge ran out almost immediately and my calculation when left to my own devices then left quite a bit to be desired. But who needs good moves when you are on a lucky streak? Game won in 24 moves!

Mike then wrapped up his victory against Shrisha Tarihalkar on Board 4. Shrisha, against whom I had played a training game only the week before, is yet another highly talented junior to emerge from Paul's CCA conveyor belt and will soon be heading to Crete for the European Youth Chess Championships to play in the Girls U-10 tournament. Against a grizzled veteran like Mike, though, this was a tough task for Shrisha and he soon built up a strong initiative with lots of play against White's king which was stranded in the centre. The win of material eventually followed and although the game continued until mate it was never in doubt.

Which I thought could also have been said about the top board game, where Andrew (on his first appearance of the season) was in play against Tom Darling. Not a lot seemed to happen for some tme, but when I finally got a good look at procedings it was clear that Andrew was in total control, with a rook and two bishops against two rooks, despite Tom also having a pair of connected kingside passed pawns. The bishops were absolutely rampant and were just about to bring home the full point, when Andrew had a complete aberration. Thinking he was setting up a mating threat (which he was) he moved his king into danger and lost one of his proud bishops to a rook skewer. I thought he was probably now losing, but with both players short of time Tom produced another surprise by offering a draw, despite being the exchange up. It may have been a draw, but I doubt Black would have risked much by playing on.

A workmanlike performance by our lads, but the KCC machine is clearly not quite firing on all cylinders. But never mind, as Jude's late withdrawal has at least given me a good excuse for both this week's title and song! Siilver lining or what??

Overcoming 500 Points (And A Spider)

Few would countenance the idea that Kenilworth might be the underdogs in an U8750 Cup match. After all, we have won the competition in each of the last three years, with four titles in the past five. There have been some brilliant nights, and great performances. Yet nothing lasts forever... Some of our younger heroes have now either gone over the rating cap, headed to university, or both. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, we've seen several retirements from competitive play amongst our more senior squad members. In addition, a number of potential players weren't available last night, so we had to go for something of a new look team. 

Weighing in at 8200, I'm willing to bet this was the lowest graded quintet Kenilworth has fielded in this event in a very long time. In contrast Shirley were a whisker below the cap at 8714, outpointing us by 514 points. We were outgraded on every board, by respectively 56, 116, 109, 116 and 118 points.  Yet what we lacked in rating points, we more than made up for in commitment and effort. All of which made last night's 3.5 - 1.5 victory a match that will live in the memory for as long as our cup final wins!

The evening got off to a lively start. I gave Steph a lift and unfortunately a spider made an appearance on the car's internal mirror, when we were driving down the motorway. Steph isn't a great fan of spiders... I promised to catch it on arrival, but unfortunately it eluded me. I guess the encounter sharpened our senses if nothing else, and fortunately we proved more adept at grappling with our human opponents.

As ever, nothing happens at Shirley early, and after we did all get in, there was a mild panic in Shirley's ranks. They were both lacking a captain and seemed to have one player too many... Fortunately, it transpired that they'd forgotten it was an LDCL match and I wasn't playing for them (which I do in the BDCL), so problem solved...

When proceedings got underway I was up against Keith Ingram on Board one. I've played lots of wild, exciting games with Keith over the years, but this wasn't one of them. Keith played a slightly unorthodox opening and stood slightly better after the first hour. I eventually managed to neutralise his king side pressure and we agreed a draw in a position where it felt like he had a slight, but not obvious edge. 

Patrick finished at about the same time. I didn't see anything of his game, but he clearly made light of the rating difference between him and Jon Asbury on Board 5, comfortably holding the draw. A great effort on Patrick's part. So 1-1.

The other three games were all terrific and at this point it seemed to me that we stood better in all of them. Dan had a position that didn't look great at first glance on Board 2 against Darren Whitmore. However, he was up a pawn and it wasn't obvious that Darren had an obvious way to break through. I was hopeful Dan would be able to unravel his pieces, at which point he would stand better. On Board 3 Tony, making his debut for the club was up a passed queenside pawn, in his game against Robert Purcell. With rooks, knights and bishops still on the board I thought it was about 50 -50, as to whether Robert would successfully blockade or if Tony would break through. On Board 4, Steph also had the better of Fred Dickson, mainly because all her pawns were on a different colour square to her bishop and all of his were on the same colour as his cleric. I just wasn't sure that she had enough to win, but it was worth a shot!

All three games went to the wire. Dan was the first to finish. He had been playing off very little time, but as his position improved, Darren slowed. Suddenly Darren's forces looked over-extended, with vulnerabilities to various pins and checks that were difficult to deal with. In desperation Darren forced the queens off, but this just made things worse and Dan was a full piece up. Darren tried a few final tricks but Dan held his nerve to bring home the full point against a very strong opponent. An excellent achievement!

Steph eventually concluded that Fred was as elusive as the spider. However much she tried, she couldn't trap him. I suspect the win wasn't there, but she'd absolutely given 110% and the draw was another extremely valuable half point for us.

All of which left Tony as the last game to finish. Tony had played in a couple of the Kenilworth summer quickplay events, but this was his first ever slow play game. It was fantastic to watch. He worked the queenside pawn for a long time, with a lot of skill, and I'd inwardly inched up my expectation that he would win to about 75%, even though it was still a very tricky position. Rob then managed to dig in extremely well, and ultimately managed to swap the queenside pawn for one of his kingside pawns. The position morphed to rook, bishop and two (Rob) vs rook, knight and three (Tony). With all the pawns now on the same side of the board, it looked much harder for Tony, but he showed incredible fight!

As the clocks ticked down to vapours Tony was absolutely relentless. He kept setting problems that Rob had to solve in not much time. As ever in chess, if you can keep asking questions, there is always a chance that eventually your opponent will get one of the answers wrong, and that's what happened... After hours on the rack, Rob finally succumbed and Tony brought home a fantastic debut victory! The first of many, I am sure.

So 3.5 - 1.5, with one spider still unaccounted for. 

I've had various messages from people today (both inside and outside the club) congratulating the team on a triumph that seemed unlikely. We'll go on to the next round (after Christmas) with a lot of hope. Who knows, maybe this team will also be looked back on in time, as having been as formidable as its predecessors... It's certainly a great start!

A Win at Home for the C team

Last Monday was our first home game of the season, against Leamington C. With a good number of C Team players to choose from this season, we were able to field three players making their first league appearances of the campaign: Algirdas, Patrick, and Anish. To round things off, Steph returned after her win the previous week.

On paper, our team was 300 rating points below the Leamington side, but home advantage must have worked in our favour, as we secured a 2.5-1.5 victory, with wins for Patrick and Anish. I was not able to watch the games, but I am sure they were all excellent chess matches.

Congratulations, everyone, and hopefully we can repeat the feat when we take on Shirley next Monday.

Quick Fire Double

Admittedly not as quick as this, which even became a quick fire treble:-

But even so, a second win in 9 days for the B team over Solihull A was still pretty fast work. After a 2.5-1.5 home triumph last week, the team managed a 3-1 win in the away return match on Wednesday night. Both teams had been missing a couple of players for the first encounter (when the total grades were 7609 for us and 7376 for Solihull) but were beefed up for the return, with Solihull at 8129 and us virtually the same at 8114. A tight match could have been expected, with a draw the most likely outcome as all the individual match ups were pretty close, too.

Quite unusually, I was the first to finish with a 23 move win over Andrew McCumiskey on Board 2 - with Black! After a fairly mundane opening I was very slightly better when Andrew made a terrible blunder and lost a whole rook to a bishop sacrifice. Not a brilliancy on my part, but I'll take it!

It was even stranger that this was the first game to finish because the other three boards had all descended into instant chaos right from the off, in contrast to my turgid game. And in fact it took a long time for the second game to finish, when Bruce scored an excellent win against Don Mason on top board. Don eventually lost on time, but by that point Bruce was two exchanges to the good and about to win more material. I had thought that Don was outplaying Bruce on the queenside, especially when securing the d3 square for his pieces, but Bruce just went all in on the kingside and something must have gone badly wrong for Black - though, of course, I failed to see the decisive moments!

On Board 4 Rhys then agreed a draw with Ray Carpenter to clinch the match. The pawn formation had got blocked and there were no possible breaks for either side in the double rook ending. This was a quiet ending to a very exciting and challenging game where I couldn't ever decide whether Rhys was much better or much worse. (Well, chess is a difficult game!) Earlier I had noticed the return of a much loved KCC positional motif when Rhys acquired a fianchettoed knight on g7 - I hope Joshua, who was sitting next to him, appreciated this as much as I did. (For those of you who are bemused by these references, I would point you to this ancient article - even though, most regtrettably, the accompanying game no longer appears, due to technical reasons which are far too complicated for me.)

Which brings us to the man himself, on Board 3. I doubt there has ever been another KCC match where I have finished first and he has finished last. He wheeled out an interesting pawn sac in the opening which caused some difficulties for the Black king and piece development, but Akshat Shivakumar very carefully unravelled his pieces and despite further tactical interludes the game eventually came down to a ridiculously difficult minor piece ending, but with Joshua still a pawn down. However, that didn't tell half the story. Joshua had bishop against knight and each side had two connected passed pawns - Joshua a and b, Akshat e and f. It looked grim for Josh, though, as the Black king was very strong and the White pawns were unable to advance. However, despite going down to about 3 seconds on his clock, Josh's defence was inspired and he managed to hold the position by sacrificing his two passed pawns to distract the Black knight and then eliminate all bar one of the Black pawns, so that he could sacrifice his bishop for the draw. By the way, I don;t know what the rule is about this, but the clock they were playing with had the sound turned on, so that it beeped loudly when Joshua's time went under 10 seconds and then again - even louder at 5 seconds! Whether he would have noticed he was about to lose on time without the audio interruption I don't know, but I suspect that the sound really should not be switched on to give players what amounts to outside assistance.

Music time. Autumn's here, so this seems quite appropriate.