29.05.19 – London League Division 2: Hammersmith vs. Dulwich
Taking the liberty of mis-quoting a verse from one of my favourite old hippy songs:
“Following our fortune now the holy grail is found,
And the holy bread of div one it is given all around,
Farewell sorrow, praise god the open door,
We ain’t got no home in the Division two world no more”
(Ducks on a Pond. The Incredible String Band, from the legendary 1968 album “Wee Tam”.)
Certainly, there has been more than a zany hint of Monty Python, or perhaps more aptly, of the Pickwick Club at times in following Hammers LL Division 2 adventures this season.
Whether your scribe is more Alfred Jingle than Mr. Pickwick I leave for the reader to judge, as in characteristic vein we approached the final round of matches tied for the second promotion spot with the venerable Metropolitan Chess Club, that quintessentially “establishment” LL Club, about as different in every way you could imagine from the brash upstarts of Lytton Hall.
With 9 match points each, 73 game points apiece (following the adjournment heroics of Marios and Bajrush in our rout of Cavendish) and a tied individual match, we all feverishly consulted the obscure LL rulebook to discover that Board Count was the final tiebreak method. The finest mathematical and legal minds of the Hammertime WhatsApp group then set to work deciphering what this arcane system actually entails.
Apparently it favoured the good guys.
Continuing our Dickensian theme – it was the best of club chess, it was the worst of club chess, as now began the week of intrigue that future chess historians will debate and analyse ad infinitum.
What had happened to the result of Metropolitan v Wanstead? The LL website and management committee maintained a frosty silence. Wanstead were not available for comment. Had Metropolitan devised a plan so cunning that you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel? Secret negotiations spanning five continents, the corridors of Whitehall and even the watering holes of the city, could not prise out the result for love nor money. Twitter banter, classic memes and all sorts of fake news did the rounds.
The unanswered, half-remarkable question, as El Loco and his troops assembled last Wednesday at Citadines at 6:50 prompt: Had the chess Maginot Line held, or did Hammer manage to carve a metaphorical route through the Low Counties and establish what score they needed against Dulwich to secure a historic promotion?
Pt. II to follow with the answers…