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.
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.
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 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.
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 (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.
Same game 29… ?
Black now had an opportunity for a reprieve, which Cox missed. Can you do better? (See the playable game for analysis.)
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.
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.
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 Position after 19… Qxd6
White has a significant advantage but Black is still in the game. After further twists and turns, White won.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
The Sligo Spring Tournament had four sections in all, and the organisers made live boards available for all games in each. Full reports have been added here for the Championship (40 players, 1st Nitish Arun), the Major (44 players, 1st Christopher Woods), and the Challenger (87 players, 1st Cal Nolan).
There was a glitch in the live boards for the Championship, or so it seems to me. The results shown on live boards for round 4 diverged in many games from those shown on Chess-Results and recorded in rating reports. This often happens for an isolated game or two, and can happen when one player loses on time, or where the live board feed fails and there are unrecorded moves. But here there seemed to be too many for those explanations to be plausible. For the report, I deleted the moves of all round 4 games, but give references to the live board feeds, and also a pgn file that includes the games in question.
One striking game occurred in the Challengers, and involved the eventual winner, Cal Nolan of St. Benildus. Here I’d like to acknowledge Kevin Burke’s post on the St. Benildus C.C. web site, which included an annotation of this game.
Nolan – D. Devine, Sligo Spring Tournament Challenger 2024 20. ?
Here 20. Nxe5+ wins straightforwardly enough, but White played the natural 20. Nd6+, and after 20… Kh8, followed up with 21. Bxe5.
But this latter move turns out to be a mistake. Black struck with 21… Bxg2+!, and after 22. Kxg2, could have mated quickly by 22… Bg3+!. In the game, Black missed the chance and played 22… Bxe1+, which loses. Still, this was an excellent effort for the Challenger section, for players rated under 1200 (higher of FIDE and ICU).
After the continuation 20. Nd6+ Kh8 from the diagrammed position, how should White have continued? Was the win still there?
The Sligo Spring Tournament was held in Enniscrone from February 2-4, 2024.
The flyer gives testimonials from players (“the best tournament in Ireland at present”, “by far the most professional weekender I’ve been to”), and these seem no idle boasts. A video collage of this year’s event, compiled by player Vladimir Mabhena, conveys the atmosphere very well.
Chief organiser Craig DuBose was interviewed by Chessdom.com two weeks ago about his plans for the event going forward.
A full report on the Masters section has (finally) been uploaded to the Tournament pages here. Craig DuBose sent all games, in two different formats, very promptly after the event, and much additional information, so the delay is down to me. In fact, I was asked recently if I had posted a report, replied that I had, and was surprised to find out that I hadn’t.
An interesting ending occurred in the round 1 encounter between Oisín O’Cuilleanain and Sergey Beryozkin.
O’Cuilleanain – Beryozkin, Sligo Spring Tournament Masters 2024 Position after 61… Rxg3
In the diagrammed position, chances are equal. Several moves later, the second diagrammed position was reached.
Same game 65… ?
Here 65… Rg5? turns out to lead to a losing ending after 66. Rf7+ Ke6 67. Rh7 Rxb5 68. Rxh4. Here Black can of course not play 67… Rh5?? because after 68. Rxh5 gxh5 the white king is too close to the black pawns.
The right way is 65… Rg3+!. Now after 66. Kc4 Rg5 67. Rf7+ Kc8 68. Rh7, Black can play 68… Rh5, when White must force a draw, while after 66. Ke4 Rxc3 67. Rxg6 a different R+2 vs. R+1 ending is reached, and this one turns out to be drawn with best play.
Instead Black played the natural but wrong 65… g5? and was lost after 66. Rh6. The game continued 66… Rg3+ 67. Kc4 h3 68. Rh7+ Kc8 and now White blundered with the disastrous 69. d5?? (69. b6 was winning), allowing 69… Rg4+ 70. Kc5 Rh5, winning.
The event resulted in a three-way tie for first between James Naughton, Oscar Culbeaux Tello, and Oleg Gubanov. For this event, as for some other recent Irish tournaments, tie-breaks were applied even for cash prizes, and Naughton finished first, with Culbeaux Tello second and Gubanov third, with very narrow margins separating each.
Congratulations to Lara Putar, who has qualified for the WFM by scoring 7/9 at the Women’s Olympiad in Budapest.
Direct WFM titles at the Women’s Olympiad require a score of at least 65% over at least 9 games, having at one point or another reached a rating of at least 1900. Lara won her fourth game in succession yesterday, reaching 6/8, and so today needed only to show up to play, regardless even of whether her opponent showed up. As it was, she won again.
(Cf. the congratulatory tweet by the ICU yesterday.)
Kevin Burke points out at the St. Benildus C.C. web site that Lara scored 6/10 at the last Women’s Olympiad, so falling ½ point short.
The Title norms page here has been updated accordingly.
