Irish Championship 1976

A report on the Irish Championship 1976 has been added to the tournament section here.

The championship was held at the New University of Ulster in Coleraine (now “Ulster University at Coleraine”), from July 17-25, 1976. It was sponsored (for the first time ever for an Irish championship, according to the tournament book), with a first prize of £150, about equal to £1,000 today.

The event drew an excellent turnout of 28 players, including the defending joint champions Eamon Keogh and Alan Ludgate, the 1974 champion Tony Doyle, and five out of the six-man squad announced a few weeks earlier for the Haifa Olympiad.

The clear favourite was Bernard Kernan, who was the player on form, having lost just two games in Ireland over the previous twelve months, winning the Oireachtas Championship, the Mulcahy Memorial and the Cavan Open, and finishing as highest placed player as equal second, ½ point behind Tony Miles, at the Dundrum International Open.

From the outset Kernan led, and after round six he was a full point clear of the field. But then he wobbled. The diagram shows the position after Kernan’s 27th move in his round 7 game against Michael Littleton. Littleton now played 28. f4. What do you think of the resulting position and how would you evaluate the chances?

Littleton – Kernan, Irish Championship 1976
Position after 27… Re8-e6

After this loss, Kernan and Littleton shared the lead with 5/7, with six more players just half a point behind. Kernan beat Tony Doyle in round 8, while Littleton drew with Ludgate. Heading into the last round, Kernan led with 6, followed by Littleton on 5½, followed by six players on 5: the defending joint champions Keogh and Ludgate, Paul Delaney, Ray Devenney, the Leinster champion (undefeated in this event) Denis Healy, and the London player Richard W. O’Brien.

If Kernan had lost and Littleton had drawn in the last round, there could have resulted a 5-way tie for first, the largest ever. (And this is not even counting Ray Devenney, whose duties as a church minister prevented him from playing in the final round, who might have made it a 6-way tie.) In the event, though, Kernan as White agreed a quick draw with Ludgate on board 1, and Littleton as Black agreed an even quicker draw with Denis Healy on board 2, leaving 21-year-old Bernard Kernan as Irish champion for the first, and as it turned out the only, time.

We’re fortunate that the organisers put together a tournament book including all but a handful of games. For some reason only four games appear as of today in the ICU games archive, and no games appear in any of the commercial databases. Many thanks are due to Alan Ludgate, who provided a copy of the tournament book plus all his scoresheets, and to David McAlister, who provided a pgn file including all games from the tournament book plus one extra game.