19-12-2022 Keddie Cup

Dave Hewitt writes:- There were 21 players (best wishes to those who intended to be there but were unwell) so it was played in the traditional four-group format (as opposed to five groups at Easter, when 29 played) and the top two from each group progressed to the knockout phase. The only person with a 100% score at this stage was Sandy, but in typical Keddie style he then promptly lost to Cameron A. The only previous winner to make it to the KO games was Sam Cook - very good to see him back from Glasgow Uni - and the quarter-finals were a good mix of newer and more established players. Sam beat Mick - excellent to see Mick reach the latter stages - Kenny beat Cameron D, and Thomas F beat Nathanael. Several of these people will surely do well in future Keddies - there's a tradition of eventually winning it after having reached the KO phase a time or two before.

The semis saw the two juniors progress: Cameron A beat Kenny and Thomas beat Sam. That set up something approaching a normal final - the players were only 65 points apart in grade (actual allegro grades, rather than estimates) and it looked like being a fairly straightforward win for Cameron after Thomas miscalculated and lost a R, leaving him with just one R against Cameron's two in an endgame. But the game continued, Thomas put up staunch defence, Cameron lost his way and was eventually - 20 or 25 moves later - obliged to give up his last R to stop one of Thomas's pawns. That led to a pawn endgame and stalemate - and hopes that this would be the first Keddie in years to finish before 10pm were replaced by the need for a replay, the first in a Keddie final since Gordon beat Martyn Roe over two games in 2013.

This time Cameron had white and both players had half the time as in the first game - five minutes vs four-and-a-half. Cameron again got ahead - he was a piece up - but perhaps still affected by his failure to win the original game he made first one illegal move then another (the second was a strange RxR diagonal-move effort) and Thomas thus became Keddie champion in curious and rather unfortunate circumstances. Congratulations to him, a fine win - and commiserations to Cameron, whose day in the Keddie and in other competitions will surely come.

It was good to see so many Keddie newcomers along with the old hands, and there was an air of a changing of the guard about the whole KO section - it was, for instance, the first time since 2007 that none of Gordon, Graham or I had got beyond the groups in a Keddie where we'd all played (and there was a run of eight years in a row when at least two of us always qualified). Gordon - a Keddie specialist - almost qualified this time but missed out on being runner-up in Group D on second tiebreak.