A report on the Irish Championship 1988 has been added to the tournaments collection here.
The event was held in Dublin, at Árdscoil Rís in Griffith Avenue. The field comprised 21 players, with Mark Orr, David Dunne, Philip Short, Pat Carton, Alan Ludgate, and Eric McMahon all rated 2250+ FIDE, and future champions Stephen Brady, Niall Carton, and Joe Ryan also in the mix. The defending champion John Delaney was absent.
In the end Philip Short won the third of his five titles by a clear point; this was the only time he won the title outright, without sharing. Despite the eventual margin of victory, it was a keenly contested event that could have ended differently. In particular, Short was clearly lost in round 7 against Niall Carton, before the latter made a strange oversight that destroyed his entire advantage. And in round 5, he could well have lost against Mark Orr in a game he eventually won: reversing that result while keeping all else the same would have left Orr clear first by ½ a point.
The Short – Orr game was a fascinating battle that will be a strong contender if a list of the most interesting games ever played in an Irish championship is compiled. It was heavily annotated by Orr in the Irish Chess Journal, but does not appear in the ICU games archive or any database as of the date of this post; in fact, no games from the event currently appear anywhere.
Mark Orr’s insightful notes are well worth reading, but here is one critical moment where he (and I think Short as well, in the post mortem) missed a difficult and deeply hidden resource.
43. ?
(White to play and win)
It’s White to play and win. After the move played in the game, Orr could have drawn. With the right move here, White has a study-like resource later that finesses Black’s defence. I’ll leave this as an exercise: how does White win against Black’s best defence? Warning: this is a very difficult exercise.
After some further twists and turns, the game reached the following interesting ending:
49… ?
(Black to play and draw)
Here Orr went wrong, and soon lost. The notes indicate the right continuation, but soon went awry. But the diagrammed position is drawn. How?
[Click to replay the full game.]
[Update, June 6, 2021: The report has been updated with additional analysis in Short – Orr, at move 27, provided by David McAlister, and removal of Eric McMahon’s age as suggested by Martin Crichton. Many thanks to both.]
[Update, June 26, 2021: The report has been updated to add Eric McMahon’s true age. Because the source gives his full date of birth, I have not linked to it, but he turned 23 in 1988 [but see below].]
[Update, May 6, 2023: The report has been updated (March 28, 2023) with a correction on Eric McMahon’s age: he was born in 1968, not 1965.]