At IRLchess we’re interested in all aspects of Irish chess history and records, but above all in games. The ICU games archive has good coverage, of course, but there are many other published games that are not included there. And every so often a new source of unpublished games turns up, best of all. One such source is an unpublished manuscript of J.J. Walsh, containing 99 selected Irish games from 1896 to 1967. I visited him in April—and as you can imagine, he has an absolute mine of information about Irish chess down the years—and he kindly allowed me to copy the manuscript. It has taken me a while to get around to comparing it to the ICU archive, but having finally done so I find that 41 games are already in, leaving 58 ‘new’ ones. I recognise a few (8 or so) from other sources, leaving around 50 that were completely new to me, which I plan to put up here. (Gradually, of course! I don’t want to run out of topics to post on.)
The first ‘new’ game is game 8. White was P. A. (Paddy) Duignan, Irish champion in 1947 and Leinster champion in 1946 and 1950 (source: Irish Times, 4 April 1957, p. 4), and this is a win from his second Leinster championship (click for playable version). Some more information on him is contained in a brief profile on the ICU web site.