| Sources |
| FIDE records |
Tournament 116402 |
| ICU web site |
Entry form (4-page pdf); rating report. |
| Chess-Results.com |
Tournament results (pairings, results, pgn of all games, tie breaks). |
| Newspapers |
- Irish Examiner (Jim Olney):
- July 25, 2015 p. W55 (report, scores of Short - Fitzsimons, round 6 and Brady - Daly, round 6, puzzle based on finish of Fitzsimons - Brady, round 5)
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- Sunday Independent (Alexander Baburin):
- July 19, 2015 p. 31 (report, annotation of Fitzsimons - Brady, round 5)
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| Sundry web commentary |
- Irish Chess Union.net posts, June 29, 2015 onwards (Colm Daly), version of July 13, 2015 (via the Wayback Machine)
- irish Championships Underway, Ennis Chess blog, July 5, 2015, plus following posts (Rory Quinn)
- Irish Senior Championships 2015, boards.ie, April 4, 2015 (one other post from around the same time, speculating on the finish of Short - Daly, round 9, omitted)
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| Notes |
| Key |
In "Pairings & results", - "age" denotes the player's age on his or her birthday that year (even if the birthday fell after the event)
- "x-ch" denotes former Irish champions
- "ol" denotes members of the previous Olympiad team (Tromsø 2014; see also team results)
- "ch#" denotes the number of championships the player played in, including this one
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| Eligibility |
The entry form specified a cutoff of 1900 on either the May 2015 ICU or May 2015 FIDE list, but with the caveat that players within 50 points of the lower limit could "at the tournament controller's discretion, "play up"". Under motions passed at the ICU AGM 2014, up to 14 players could play without any rating requirement: up to 10 upon invitation by various officials, and up to 4 by winning various other tournaments.
In the event, all players except Dylan Boland were eligible without resorting to the extra exceptions (Henry Li and Tom O'Gorman via the 50-point controller's discretion leeway). |
| Tie break |
The policy and/or practice for handling tie-breaks for the title of Irish champion had been since 1975 that two eligible players would share the title, and, since at least 1982, that for three or more eligible tied players a tie-break of some sort would apply. No rule for three-or-more-way ties was announced for 2015. For the previous year's championship, the rule was that "Where two players tie for first place the title and prize money will be shared. Where 3 or more tie for first place the top two using Buchholz Meridian system (Hi-Lo) will share the title and all tied players will share the 1st., 2nd., 3rd., and 4th ( if advertised ) prizes equally." This was a departure from previous policy and/or practice, in that previously tie-break would determine a single champion. |
| Olympiad place |
The winner was guaranteed an automatic Olympiad place for the 2016 Olympiad. Philip Short won the place on tie-break, but did not take the option to play. (The entry form specified Median Buchholz, followed by Buchholz, followed by result of individual game, followed by progressive, and if all these failed, then "the tied players involved" would each get an automatic Olympiad place. The players tied on Buchholz (38 each), and Short finished ahead on Median Buchholz (48 to 47½)). |
| Ratings |
FIDE ratings are from the July 2015 list.
ICU ratings are from the May 2015 list. |
| Clubs |
Stephen Jessel's club affiliation is from 1ère Norme de Stephen Jessel, Echiquier du Vésinet web pages, June 6, 2014. |
| Defaults |
Martin Crichton requested a half-point bye in round 1 but the request was relayed to the arbiter too late. |
| Unusual incidents and talking points |
The odd end to the deciding game Short-Daly (round 9) was debated at length at the Ballynafeigh blog ("Off the Chest" section, in which comments are continually deleted) and at boards.ie. After 58. ... Kd7?? White could win easily (and finish clear first) with 59. Qf8, and later after 61. ... Kf8?? White could have won with 62. e5. This strange double and mutual set of errors, when neither player was exceptionally short on time, was the subject of considerable comment. |
| Versions |
- v0.1-0.4: interim reports while tournament was in progress
- v0.5 (13 Jul 2015): first published version after end of tournament
- v0.6 (13 Jul 2015): corrected Gerard O'Connell round 5 result to ½-point bye, instead of full bye as previously listed
- v1.0 (16 Jul 2015): added ICU ratings report, information on tie-breaks, reference to chess-results.com, references to concurrent events, note on defaults, and web references; removed note on FIDE tournament report; corrected number of games played
- v1.1 (24 Jul 2015): added O'Donnell - Fitzsimons (round 2) to list of interesting games; added note to O'Gorman-O'Rourke (round 5) that final combination is unsound; added an item in Notes on the unusual incident in Short - Daly (round 9)
- v1.2 (2 Jun 2016): modified format, corrected typographical errors
- v1.3 (1 Oct 2016): added light notes to some games; modified format
- v1.4 (26 Apr 2017): deleted spurious extra games from 2014 championship in games_irlch2015 subfolder; added number of championships played for each player in Pairings & results
- v1.5 (1 Dec 2017): updated link to video of MacElligott - O'Rourke (round 4) and Palmer - O'Gorman (round 4); corrected O'Rourke - Daly (round 1) by adding 9 extra ply
- v1.6 (31 Jan 2019): modified link to Échiquier du Vésinet web pages in Notes → Clubs; added note about dead link to Irish Chess Union.net in Sources → Sundry web commentary; modified layout of playable games and added extra indexing information in playable game files
- v1.7 (12 Dec 2020): added light notes to O'Rourke - Daly, round 1, Brady - Donnell, round 7, and Jessel - Daly, round 8; added references to newspaper reports in Sources and notes → Sources and added Tournament report based on Jim Olney's account; in Information → Basic data, changed "Extra information" item to "Videos", and added link to Brady - O'Donnell video; removed dead link to video in MacElligott - O'Rourke and Palmer - O'Gorman, round 4; modified description of Eligibility in Information → Basic data, and added corresponding item in Sources and notes → Notes (previously pointed to but absent); modified description of tie-break in Information → Basic data; corrected tie-break rule for Olympiad place in Sources and notes → Notes → Olympiad place (previously incomplete, stopping after individual game); added Tie break entry in Sources and notes → Notes; changed dead link to Irishchessunion.net to version from Wayback Machine in Sources and notes → Notes → Sundry web commentary; added link to Olympiad team results in Sources and notes → Notes → Key; modified reference to Chess-Results.com from playable games; modified URLs to eliminate redirects and change from http to https where possible
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| Contributors |
Seán Coffey |