Stirling Chess Club: 18 December 2017

Wednesday 3 January 2018

18 December 2017 - Keddie Cup

Dave Hewitt writes:-

The 2017 Keddie Cup was another good one, with what could well have been a record entry of 29 (the previous highest I know of was 27 in 2008) and some very lively and hard-fought chess as usual. Congratulations go to Alex Brimlow, who had the lowest non-estimated grade of anyone in the room (377) and who beat his best pal Idris Benwell (394) in an entertaining final. Alex built up a good position early on (after making a rectified illegal move which gave Idris an extra minute on his clock), then missed a mate in two after which which Idris found two excellent defensive Q moves to keep the game very much alive. He went wrong again however and this time Alex did manage to spot a mate - an attractive mid-board one, which he missed on the first opportunity but then found to give the game and the tournament a nice conclusion. Alex thus becomes the third consecutive Keddie winner from the ranks of the low-graded juniors, after Carl Zihan Kang (803) last year and Sam Cook (488) in 2015, following a run of three wins by adults from the higher grades. It was the first junior vs junior final since the period when the Blake boys dominated the Keddie.

For the preliminary stage this year we switched from the traditional model of four groups to five, and this felt like it went very well. In future years, five groups is likely to be the norm for any Keddie with more than 24 players, as five rounds per group feels very manageable and we were into the mid-session raffle-and-food break by just after 9pm last night. The potential complication with five groups - that only the best three runners-up go through to join the group winners - didn't prove to be a problem. Alex S was the best runner-up, and was joined by Crawford (who was in the only group of five so had his score of 3/4 converted to 3.75/5) and Richard. The unlucky runners-up who didn't make it through were Martin Pringle and Craig Manson, who each scored 3/5. Ken Stewart was particularly unfortunate in that he scored 3.5/5 but still only managed to finish third in his group, behind the two Alexes (if that's the correct plural form of Alex).

No one had a 100% score on the night, as Ken took a draw off Alex B in the group. Idris and Gordon each scored 5/5 in the groups, but of course both lost a KO game later. Bill Gray and Mick Bloor contrived to lose all their games, but hopefully weren't too dismayed by this and will return in hope of doing better next year. For once there were no drawn games in the KO phase (hence the Keddie's first Armageddon game will need to await another year), while the only ties requiring to be broken in the groups came with Steve finishing level with Crawford in group E but winning the group courtesy of his victory in their actual game, and Craig Manson similarly finishing ahead of Maria Ash on head-to-head result in group C, although this still wasn't enough to see him through to the quarter-finals.

It was nice to meet the newcomer Ashley Clayton from the university club - making your first appearance at the club on Keddie night must be quite daunting, but he finished with a respectable 1.5/5 in group D. Overall, I reckon there were nine people making their Keddie debut - good to see. (Alex S wasn't sure if he'd played before, but he got to the quarter-finals in 2008.) It was good to see friends from the Grangemouth, Stirling University and Glasgow Polytechnic clubs, and it was especially good to see John and Jonathan Blake back in Keddie action after a break.