What a final!
While your reporter was still busy with the last match in Champions League 9 (2021-2023), entries for the next season 10 (2024-2026) were already being accepted.
But let’s take a quick look back.
As you know, CCI 1 played in Season B. We were aware that we would be playing for relegation in a very strong field. To achieve this, we had to finish at least 7th in the table (with 12 team competitions). The plan was to lose as few matches as possible, win a few and draw the rest. And if we could achieve more, we’d be happy to take it.
But things didn’t go well at first. We narrowly lost against two of the top three teams. Then a long series of draws. Towards the end of the tournament, it became clear that we had to win the last two matches and that we also needed help from another team.
In my penultimate game (see Newsletter 53), I was clearly winning and just had to be careful not to play any nonsense. After a long struggle, the engines indicated mate. My opponent, who had previously played very quickly and accumulated a lot of thinking time, now played very slowly and in the end allowed three weeks to pass before resigning.
So the decision depended on the last two games of the tournament. And as fate would have it, the foreign game ended in a draw. That was good, but now I had to win the last game in the tournament to finish in a tie for 7th-10th place with CCI. And that was absolutely crazy. If I won, four teams would have the same team and board points. Also, all matches between the four teams would have ended in a tie. The fourth tiebreaker criterion would be the best result on the first board.
So, as I said, this last game was completely even and should have ended in a draw under normal circumstances. Under other circumstances, I would have agreed to a draw offer from my opponent a long time ago.
Here, however, I remembered Tartakower, according to which no game has ever been won by a draw or resignation:-)) So I played on calmly and soon realized that my opponent had some kind of problem with his time management. He was always ahead of me at first and now he was taking a lot of time with every move. It was running out mercilessly and there was no more extra time at this point.
Well, long story short… his (virtual) hand fell. (https://www.iccf.com/event?id=95505)
I hope my opponent is doing well and has been able to digest the final result quickly. In any case, it earned us a place in the new B series 2024-2026. And the games are already underway there. The starting shot was February 25, 2024.
CCI is fielding two teams in the new series.
Champions League B (https://www.iccf.com/event?id=104954)
Gero Marten
Werner Löffler
Hans-Dieter Wassilieff
Bernd Kluge
Champions League C (https://www.iccf.com/event?id=104958)
Wolfgang Richter
Hans-Peter Tödter
Ingo Bülow
Reinhard Wolfram
I wish all participants lots of fun and success… and don’t challenge the chess goddess Caissa like I did.