16 December 2013 - Keddie Cup

Dave Hewitt writes: Hope everyone who was there enjoyed the Keddie Cup last night. Good turnout, with 20 taking part, allowing a neat five players per group for the preliminary section. The 16 Stirling members were complemented by four guests: David Marshall - last year's runner-up; his Badgers Brook colleague and former Stirling stalwart (and double Keddie winner) Kenny McGeoch; Ken Stewart from the Polytechnic club; and young Finlay Anderson.

Congratulations go to Gordon Allcock, who won the title for the first time after having been runner-up two years ago. Runner-up this time was Martyn Roe (the 2005 winner), who came very close to taking the title again in what was surely the game of the night, the first of the two final games. This was a great cut-and-thrust encounter that left various of the spectators barely able to watch the latter stages, so goodness knows what it must have been like to play in. Gordon was a piece up for much of the game but Martyn hung in and managed to turn it round - but was unable to mate with Q+R against a bare K before his flag fell. He had, however, taken care to snap off Gordon's final pawn, meaning it was a draw - the only one in the entire tournament. So the colours were swapped, the times on the clock were halved and off they went again - and this time Gordon retained an early advantage and went on to win.

Gordon with the trophy

Overall, this year's Keddie felt like a classic of its kind: of the nine 1500+ players at the start, only one (me) made it through to the quarter-finals (where I was seen off by Martyn in another wild game). The final eight included four former winners (with two of the other four having previously lost finals), and it was the first Keddie since at least 2005 when no one named Blake made it through to the semis.

The semis featured the four form players on the night - but the two with 100% records, David Marshall and Robert Leckie, both lost. Overall, everyone bar Robert Togneri won at least one game, and there were lots of interesting encounters - eg I'd like to have seen more of the Nick Blake vs Gordon Q vs R ending in their quarter-final, but I was needing to concentrate on my own game. Finlay's win against John Blake and Tom McKay's win against Bill Cook definitely sounded like they were worth seeing. (Bill didn't qualify, but had the consolation of being the only person to beat the eventual winner.)

The social side of things seemed to go well - thanks to all who brought along foodstuffs and/or raffle prizes. It was good to see Craig Manson back from his transatlantic travels - and he might well be the first person ever to make it through to the Keddie quarter-finals while jetlagged.

The club is closed for the next two Mondays, and reopens on Monday 6 January (with the Stirling Wallace allegro team playing away at Badgers Brook that same night).