Irish 65+ Championship 2025

The recent New Year festival also included the Irish 65+ Championship, which attracted a very healthy entry of 34.

A full report has been added to the Tournament pages here.

Four boards per round were available on live boards, and these included many entertaining games. One game that caught the eye was the rollercoaster encounter between clubmates Peter Cafolla and Peter J. Lynch in round 1. The former was heading to a smooth win when he slipped by blundering a knight, whereupon he gave up an exchange to try to muddy the issue, ending a full rook down. A slip by the latter enabled a miraculous escape.

Joe Noone finished clear first on an unbeaten 6/7, to win the title of Irish 65+ champion for the first time. Half a point behind, and also unbeaten, was the defending champion Gerard O’Connell. Gerry MacElligott and Pat Reynolds shared 3rd-4th a further half a point back.

In addition to the 28 games available on live boards, two extra games were contributed by Michael Burniston and Gerry MacElligott, for which many thanks.

Michael’s game featured a striking finish.

Burniston - Fitzpatrick, Irish 65+ Championship 2025

Burniston – Fitzpatrick, Irish 65+ Championship 2025
26. ?

Four moves before the diagrammed position, the game stood in the balance, but a single slip led to a cascade of forced further concessions, pushing Black back. His last four moves were … Qe7-f7 (the losing move), … Qf7-g8, … Ke8-e7, and … Ke7-e8.

So much time had been given up that there had to be a breakthrough. Michael found the spectacular 26. Qxd5!!, when the queen is immune because of 27. Bb5 mate. After 26… g5 27. fxg6 Qxg6 he followed up with 28. Rxc6!!, and after 28… Qh6, delivered the coup de grâce with 29. Rxc8+!. Nicely done!

[Click to replay the full game.]

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IM Dmitriy Kushko registers as IRL

Ireland has a new IM: Dmitriy Kushko, born 2004, has switched his registration from Ukraine to Ireland. Belated congratulations!

A Connaught Telegraph profile from March 2023 says that he is from Kharkiv, and had arrived in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo in May 2022.

I had not heard that this transfer was underway, and only noticed his entry for the Irish Championship earlier today, which prompted me to check his eligibility. With this FIDE transfer, he is certainly eligible to play, but will he be eligible for the title of Irish champion? The last AGM added new requirements. He will be eligible for the title if he becomes a citizen of the Republic of Ireland before the event, but not otherwise, and indeed might not be eligible for the title even next year, as I think the registration transfer occurred after the beginning of this year. [Update: he won the Irish New Year IM Morm event earlier a little over a week ago—quite convincingly—and was registered as Ukraine for that event.]

In any case, Ireland gains a very strong player. He earned the IM title in 2023, having recorded four norms and crossed 2400 in the June 2023 list. He is currently rated 2449 FIDE, his highest rating ever, so will move into fifth place in the all-time list of peak ratings of Irish players, when the list is updated.

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Irish International Open 2025

Last weekend’s events also featured the Irish International Open, which attracted a mammoth field of 75. The top seed, by a margin of over 300 rating points, was IM Kristian Stuvik Holm of Norway. Only four other players were rated over 2000 FIDE: Colm Daly, Shane Melaugh, Oisín O’Cuilleanain, and Anuar Tureshbayev.

Holm duly finished first on 6½/7, with his sole dropped half point conceded against O’Cuilleanain, in a short draw where O’Cuilleanain, as Black, seems to have stood somewhat better.

O’Cuilleanain won a fine game, also as Black, against Colm Daly in round 5, and held the joint lead going into the last round. However, he lost as White against Tureshbayev, after dropping an exchange in a level position.

A full report has been added to the Tournament pages here, with 49 games from live boards.

One interesting episode occurred in the third round game between James Kavanagh and Shane Melaugh.

Kavanagh - Melaugh, Irish International Open 2025, 24W

Kavanagh – Melaugh, Irish International Open 2025
24… ?

In the diagrammed position, Black is winning comfortably enough, and needed only to play 24… g6. Instead he erred with 24… Qxf2+??, and found that after 25. Rg2 he was losing his queen, since after 25… Qd4, as played, White had 26. Rd7. After 26… g6 27. Rxd4 Rxd4, the second diagrammed position was reached.

Kavanagh - Melaugh, Irish International Open 2025, 27B

Same game
28. ?

But does White have any real winning chances here? It does not appear so: there isn’t enough time to break through with h4-h5, and in many lines Black can exchange a pair of rooks and create a fortress. Of course, White could take an immediate draw via 28. Qf6 Rfd8 29. Rxg6+, etc.

Kavanagh - Melaugh, Irish International Open 2025, 35W

Same game
35… ?

White went astray and lost the h-pawn, and after the exchange of a pair of rooks, the third diagrammed position was reached. This is beyond the range of tablebases, but it appears this should be drawn with best play. However, White has to be careful. In the game, he went astray and Black managed to roll his K-side pawns home.

[Click to replay the full game.]

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Irish 50+ Championship 2025

The Irish chess year sprang to life over the weekend, with a large number of events at the Talbot Hotel Stillorgan, including an International Open, a GM norm and an IM norm event, the Irish 50+ and 65+ championships, a blitz, and the Leinster Junior Championships in six age categories.

For the Irish 50+ Championship, defending champion and top seed Jonathan O’Connor successfully recorded his second consecutive victory, with an unbeaten 5½/7, ahead of Oscar Culbeaux Tello, who finished half a point behind, after losing to Jonathan and also Anthony Fox. Fox tied for third with the visiting Ragnar Holm of Norway.

John Delaney reached 3½/4, but withdrew and did not play in the last three rounds.

Congratulations to Jonathan; here is a photo of him with the trophy.

For some reason, participation was down markedly over last year’s event, with only 15 this time compared to 29 last time.

A full report has been added to the tournament pages here.

The last round game between Culbeaux Tello and Paul Ward saw a neat combination.

Culbeaux Tello - Ward, irish 50+ Championship 2025

Culbeaux Tello – Ward, Irish 50+ Championship 2025
16… ?

In the diagrammed position, Black’s best (really, only) chance is 16… Nf3+!? 17. Qxf3 Bxf4, but then White has 18. Nxe6! with a very strong attack.

In the game, Black played 16… Nc4?, after which 17. Nxe6! was overwhelming.

[Click to replay the full game.]

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Downloading games from IRLchess

The “Search games” function here (see right column and the games page) has been modified to add a link to download a pgn file corresponding to the results of a search. I hope this will be useful for readers.

For example, typing "baburin, alexander" gives a result page with 574 games and 9 results without moves. Clicking the link at the bottom of the page downloads a pgn file with 583 games.

The file is named baburin-alexander-q-583-20241204-Wed-175416.pgn. Why such a long name? The idea is to aid the reader who searches at one time, and again some time later, and who wonders whether there have been any changes. The name of the pgn download will change if and only if something has changed in the search: new games added, or old ones deleted, or a new writing of one of the result’s playable game files.

(The naming is derived from the search "baburin, alexander", dropping the comma and converting the space to a dash, adding -q- to indicate that what has gone before was a composite search term rather than "baburin" "alexander", adding the number of games in the search (583 here), and adding the latest time of any game file writing (20241204-Wed-175416 here).)

Each game in the result file has the added tags “[URL” and “[LastModified” automatically generated from the file system. Note that this does not mean that the pgn file itself (without the URL and LastModified tags) has changed, or even that the .htm file has changed: it reflects only the last time the file was written. For example, if a tournament report is rewritten to add commentary in one game, the entire game file will usually be reprocessed, and the change dates of all game .htm files will change.

Up until now, games could be searched using multiple search terms, but if quotation marks were used for any search terms, they had to be used for all. Thus for example, to search for C. H. O’D. Alexander’s games from 1959, the search terms

"alexander, c. h. o'd." "1959"

could be (and still can be) used, but dropping the quotation marks from 1959 would yield no results. This restriction has now been removed, so the search

"alexander, c. h. o'd." 1959

yields the same results.

The results only include games included in the most recent site index; other games might be included in sundry files (search “-month2024-12” to find sundry games for this month) or in a tournament added after the most recent site index. The date of the most recent site index is given on the search results page.

Finally, it is not always the case that a player’s name is rendered the same way throughout the site, as should be clear from searches. I’m working to standardise player names over time, but in the meantime, a search does not automatically find all games of a given player.

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Kilkenny Masters 2024

The Kilkenny Congress took place last weekend, attracting 246 players (apparently a record) over three sections.

A report on the full Congress by Gerry Graham, with many photos, can be found on the ICU web site.

The Masters attracted a strong field of 28, including 5 GMs. A full report has been added here, including 19 of the 83 games.

Gawain Jones won first prize in emphatic style, finishing on 5½/6, a full point and a half clear of the field.

He did not have it entirely his own way, though, as he could well have lost his first round game against Paul Wallace, in which he conceded his only half point.

Jones - Wallace, Kilkenny Masters 2024

Jones – Wallace, Kilkenny Masters 2024
51… ?

In the diagrammed position, it’s Black to play: should he play 51… Nc5 or 51… Kxh4, and why is there any difference?

Wallace chose incorrectly, granting Jones a reprieve a couple of moves later, which he missed, only to be reprieved again, and the game ended in a draw. Of course, as so often in endgames these days, both players were short of time (Jones 16 seconds and Wallace 2 minutes 17 seconds in the diagrammed position), and the correct path is far from obvious.

See the playable game for (slightly) more details. For a full explanation, the reader is invited to use the 7-piece Syzygy tablebases.

[Click to replay the full game.]

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Ireton – Cox, Wexford Premier 1973

The 1968 Irish championship, covered here recently, featured seven teenagers. Two of these were David Cox of Dublin C.C., and Oatlands College, Dublin (my own school), who finished equal 3rd-4th, and Tom Ireton of C.C.Y.M.S. and Sullivan’s Quay C.B.S., Cork, who finished equal 6th-10th.

Neither one had been selected for that year’s Glorney Cup team, but Cox played in the following two and Ireton the following three. Cox was Ireland’s representative in the 9th Niemeyer tournament, the precursor to the European Junior Championship, in 1970-71, and Ireton was Ireland’s representative in the first European Junior Championship the following year, 1971-72.

They met in the last round of the 3rd Wexford Congress Premier tournament in 1973, in a game that does not appear in the ICU games archive, and probably in any database, as of the date of this post.

Cox entered the FIDE rating list the following month at 2325, he is still rated 2300.

Ireton - Cox, Wexford Premier 1973

Ireton – Cox, Wexford Premier 1973 (5)
26… ?

Ireton sacrificed a knight on b5 for three pawns. After inaccuracies by both players, the diagrammed position was reached. Black would now be fine after 26… e5!, with only a small advantage for White. Instead after 26… Kd8? 27. e5!, he was lost.

After 27… Bb7, the most direct win was 28. b5 Na5 29. Bxb7 Nxb7 30. c5. Ireton instead chose 28. Rd6, and after 28… Kc7, followed up with the further inaccuracy 29. Rad1?, reaching the second diagrammed position; instead 29. b5 is probably still winning.

Ireton - Cox, Wexford 1973, II

Same game
29… ?

Black now had an opportunity for a reprieve, which Cox missed. Can you do better? (See the playable game for analysis.)

After further twists and turns, Ireton won.

[Click to replay the full game.]

This six-player all-play-all resulted in a clear win for Tony Doyle. Ireton, who had drawn his other four games, overtook Cox with this win and finished in clear second place. Cox shared third with Michael Keeshan, followed by Pádraig Ó Briain and Art Coldrick.

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A game of Jim Phelan’s

John Saunders’ outstanding BritBase website provides a constant stream of newly discovered games, aided by contributions from a set of regular contributors at the English Chess Forum, and some of these involve Irish players.

One game, added there today, is from the Major Open section in the British Championship 1951, and features perhaps the first known game by “the Irish writer, activist, and tramp” Jim Phelan.

I was not familiar with Phelan, but his unusual life story is very thoroughly covered, by Patrick Maume, in the Dictionary of Irish Biography and, from the chess point of view, by Edward Winter (“Convict, Vagabond, and Chessplayer”).

James Leo (Jim) Phelan was born in Inchicore, Co. Dublin in 1895. On March 11, 1923, he joined Seán McAteer, a member of the Communist Party of Ireland, in holding up a family-run post office in Liverpool, where Phelan was living. Though Phelan always maintained that the motive was non-political, Maume asserts that the robbery was undertaken for the IRA. The robbery went bad, and McAteer shot dead one of the family. McAteer escaped to the Soviet Union, where he was later killed in the 1937 purges, but Phelan was captured, and as an accomplice in the robbery was legally responsible for the murder. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was soon commuted to life imprisonment. He spent 15 years in Winson Green, Maidstone, Dartmoor, and Parkhurst. During his captivity, he took a creative writing class, and compiled notes on his experiences, which he later used as the basis for 23 books.

Phelan played chess in prison, and was a founder member of a chess club at Parkhurst. His novel Jail Journey (London, 1940) describes a simultaneous exhibition there by Sir George Thomas in which he played (cf. Winter’s article).

The game added today at BritBase is, unfortunately, a loss. Phelan fell behind in development and had a difficult position out of the opening.

Peach - Phelan, British Championship Major Open 1951

Peach – Phelan, British Championship Major Open 1951
Position after 19… Qxd6

White has a significant advantage but Black is still in the game. After further twists and turns, White won.

[Click to replay the full game.]

Phelan scored 2½/11, finishing in 30th-31st place, tied with Peach, out of 32. John J. O’Hanlon played in the same section, scoring 5½/11 for joint 16th-18th places. This event had “a strong “Swiss” field of 32” (BCF Yearbook 1950-51) and the winner qualified for the following year’s British Championship.

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Irish Championship 1968

The first Irish championship held under the newly introduced rules discussed in the last post was the 1968 event, held in Dixon Hall in Trinity College, Dublin.

The field of 21 included the defending champion Wolfgang Heidenfeld, previous champion and perennial contender Brian Reilly, additional selected member of the Olympiad team Ken O’Riordan, and the newly crowned Ulster champion Matt O’Leary. There was also a large cohort of 11 players making their Irish championship débuts, including Ray Byrne, Paul Cassidy, Oisín Ó Siochrú; four members of the team selected for the Glorney Cup team, Peter O’Kane and David C. Wilson of Belfast, and Edward W. (“Teddy”) Lewis and F. Ballance of Dublin; and two more strong juniors, David Cox of Dublin and Tom Ireton of Cork.

However, several strong potential contenders were absent, including the 1966 champion John Moles, the 1965 champion Michael Littleton, and, from the previous Olympiad team, Ray Cassidy and Eamon Keogh. In the Cork Examiner, “The Knight” thought that the championship, “though decidedly weak at the top, was certainly not so in the middle of the field” (July 22, 1968).

In the event, Heidenfeld was on form, and recorded emphatic wins against Frank Doyle of London, Byrne, Eugene O’Hare, Reilly, and Wilson to reach 5½/6, having conceded only a short draw against Paul Cassidy. However, this was sufficient only for the joint lead, as Cassidy had also won all his other games. Newspaper reports indicate that he had enjoyed a slice of luck against Wilson in round 5, when the latter resigned in a level position.

In round 7, Cassidy was held to a draw by Peter O’Kane, while Heidenfeld won again, against Cox O’Riordan, so that Heidenfeld led by half a point.

In round 8, fortunes were reversed, and Heidenfeld was held to a draw by Cox, while Cassidy won against Edward W. Lewis, so the two were tied again.

In the final round, Heidenfeld beat O’Kane, while Cassidy lost to Cox, giving Heidenfeld his fifth title, and Cassidy clear second place, one point behind. Ray Byrne and David Cox shared third and fourth, a further half point back.

Though it doesn’t seem to have been remarked on at the time, under the system prior to the changes introduced earlier in the year, i.e., eight rounds with ties broken by “sum of opponents’ scores”, Cassidy would have won narrowly on tie-break, assuming all other results stayed the same.

Three games survive. One, Byrne’s emphatic win against O’Leary from round 3, is missing from the ICU games archive, and possibly from all databases, as of the date of this post. The other two, Heidenfeld’s wins against Byrne and Reilly, were published in BCM and Informator respectively, and later analysed in detail by Heidenfeld in Lacking the Master Touch (South African Chessplayer, 1970).

A full tournament report has been added here. J. J. Walsh has very kindly lent me his copy of Lacking the Master Touch, inscribed with a dedication by Heidenfeld, for which many thanks, and copies of the relevant pages are included in the report.

Here is one crucial moment, discussed in detail by Heidenfeld.

Reilly - Heidenfeld, Irish Championship 1968
Reilly – Heidenfeld, Irish Championship 1968
28. ?

In the diagrammed position, Heidenfeld has just played 27… Nf3 (from d4). How should White respond, and how does the game stand? (See playable game for further discussion.)

[Click to replay the full game.]

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Changes in the Irish Championship

From an article in the Cork Examiner on February 16, 1968, by “The Knight”:

Changes In The Championship

A number of important changes in the Irish Championship have been announced recently by the Irish Chess Union, who last year appointed a special sub-committee to look into the running and organisation of this tournament which, though surpassed by a number of other tournaments from the point of view of prize-money is still the most coveted and probably the toughest tournament in the Irish chess calendar.

The main changes are (i) there will be nine rounds, the extra round to be played on the second Sunday; (ii) ties for first place will no longer be split by “sum of opponents” scores, but by a match; (iii) a replica of the Irish Championship Shield will be presented to the winner, and there will be additional prizes; (iv) the tournament will no longer be open to any standard of player; (v) a tournament confined to players ineligible on grounds of playing strength for the championship will be run concurrently with cash prizes, provided the organising union considers the demand sufficient; and (vi) the championship will not necessarily rotate from province to province and will not necessarily be played in July.

The evolution of the format and venue over time can be seen on the Irish Championship page at David McAlister’s Irish Chess History web site. The first Swiss format event was the 1949 championship, held over seven rounds. From the following year, the format switched to eight round Swisses, with the exception of all-play-alls in 1960, 1961, and 1964. Apart from one more all-play-all in 1986, and an anomalous and controversial compressed seven-round event in 1989, all Irish championships have been nine-round Swisses, starting in 1968.

The tie-break method has evolved markedly over the years. Initially, ties were resolved by playoff matches, or, as in 1926, an all-play-all playoff tournament with all tied players. Starting with introduction of the Swiss system in 1949, the tie-break method became Sonneborn-Berger, and this was used to decide the championships of 1953, 1955, and 1962. At some stage after 1962, the system changed to “sum of opponents’ scores”, and Wolfgang Heidenfeld won the 1967 championship over Paul Henry based on this method. The next event after the 1968 change that featured a tie was the 1972 event, when Heidenfeld defeated Matt O’Leary in a playoff match. As it happens, he would have won on “sum of opponents’ scores” as well, but would have lost on almost any other commonly used system, including Direct Encounter.

The trophy for the Irish championship for many years was a large wooden shield, which sadly was lost a few years later, in the early 1970s.

“The Knight” declared that there was almost unanimous agreement that change (iv), restricting entry, was the most important change. Entry was to be restricted to nominations by provincial secretaries of players who were judged capable of scoring 50% in the Irish championship as it had been structured in recent years. This is slightly puzzling from today’s perspective, as the traditional method for allocating places, in the pre-Swiss days, was nomination by provinces, so in some ways this was a simple return to the prior norm. Possibly this was a reaction to the two relatively large fields in 1966 and 1967 (42 and 33, respectively); perhaps there was some feeling that the standard was too variable. The ICU rating system was in its infancy, and starting in 1972 the 1900 bar for qualification was installed.

For change (v), concurrent events were not unknown before 1968: for example, the 1964 event had a concurrent Irish Open. But these were the rare exception to the general rule of a stand-alone event.

Finally, “The Knight” remarked that the last change, involving removal of automatic rotation between provinces, was necessary due to “the breakdown of organised chess” in Connacht. “It seems at present unlikely that another Irish Championship will take place in Galway or anywhere in the West for that matter.” However, “The Knight” found it unfortunate that the wording meant that Munster would lose its regular place of every fourth year in the rotation (which should become every third year without Connacht), which it had held since 1947. Indeed, the 1947, 1951, 1955, 1963, and 1967 championships were held in Cork, and the 1959 championship in Killarney. “The Knight” regretted that the Munster authorities, unlike their Leinster and Ulster counterparts, had not responded to the proposals. As it was, Cork hosted the championship regularly for several years after the new rule was introduced: 1971, 1973, 1977, 1980, and 1982—so one year in three—but has never held a championship since then.

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