On 13th May we went to Grangemouth for the Chess Scotland “Finals Day”.

It was looking like all the events were going to be quite exciting.

On board 1 on the Richardson it was newly-minted FM Freddy vs GM Keti.

There was also an Indian 2500 GM playing on board 1 for Strathclyde University in the Campbell Rosebowl!

We were modest favourites against Bank of Scotland, having at least a 100 points on every board except 2 (which was a toss-up).

We also benefited from having white on 3 of the 5 boards – a quirk of having an odd number of boards:

In the end it started out quite tense, with Bob halving out after getting move-ordered in the opening.

Euan mixed things up in the opening and looked busted, managed to pull things back to normality through a titanic effort, only to blunder it all away.

However by that stage I was winning on board 1, Daniel had had an uncharacteristic wobble in the opening but after that looked winning, and Richard was managing to keep their underrated board 5 at bay, entering the right side of a two-results queenless middlegame. I wasn’t too concerned as even if Daniel somehow drew, then a tied match would be a win for us on tiebreaks as long as I won.

In the end Daniel and I both won, and Richard drew. A 3-2 victory for the team and a great trophy with a 121 year history (https://www.chessscotland.com/champions/spens-cup-winner/) to carry back to Aberdeen!

Full results at https://chess-results.com/tnr766033.aspx?lan=1&art=3&rd=5