22 December 2014 - Keddie Cup

Dave Hewitt writes:- Congratulations to Kenny McGeoch, who won the Keddie Cup last night with a fine unbeaten display, dropping only two draws en route to the title. He beat me in the final in a typical wild Keddie game - after 20 or so moves I was ahead and almost winning, having increased the initial material advantage and launched a strong attack. But Kenny instigated clever counterplay involving an advanced e-pawn and threats down the f-file - too good for me and the second half of the game turned into a K-hunt with the mating threats only avoided at the cost of a completely lost endgame position. A fine performance by Kenny, who was clearly the strongest and most in-form player on the night. I was having a good (if repeatedly very lucky) night too, but was no match for him in the end, even with the handicap in my favour.

The beaten semi-finalists were Neil Irving and the 2013 winner Gordon Allcock. Full results will be posted in due course.

It's the first time anyone has won the Keddie from the top-grader slot since Paul a decade ago, and as far as I'm aware Kenny becomes first non-member to take home the trophy - although of course he was a Stirling stalwart before work took him away to the wilds of West Lothian and the Badgers Brook club. The late Maxwell Thornton (in the period before its current handicap incarnation) has most Keddie wins with four, while Nick Blake also has three wins.

There were 19 players in all last night, as against 20 last year. The various visitors generally did well in terms of reaching the knockout stage, and an oddity was that each of four groups had one of their qualifying places decided by the head-to-head tiebreak between two players with the same score. Another curiosity was the high number of draws - last year the only drawn game was the first encounter in the final, whereas this time 11 games in all were drawn (including four involving me) out of 45 games played overall.

Dave and Kenny start the Final

Kenny with the trophy

Thanks again to everyone who played, brought catering items and raffle prizes and generally helped with setting up and packing away. The club is now closed for two Mondays - so there's nothing happening on 29 Dec and 5 Jan - then we reconvene on 12 Jan.