It has been a long time since an over-the-board event was played in Ireland: I think the last one was the Irish Championship, which finished almost a year ago. This past weekend saw a very welcome return to over-the-board play, with two events held simultaneously.
The Ulster Championship 2021, held at Stormont, was a 5-round, 16-player Swiss. Tom O’Gorman finished first with 5/5, followed by Mandar Tahmankar and Alice O’Gorman. Since none of these had resided in Ulster for the past twelve months, the title of Ulster champion went to the next highest finisher Thomas Donaldson, who had previously won in 2018. From the results, he seems to have won on tie-break over Gareth Annesley and Stephen Scannell. No games seem to be available, unfortunately.
The second event was the first in the 100th Irish Championship series, the First Weekender (also described as the “Challengers”), reserved for players rated at most 1300 on the most recent ICU list. Gavin Sheahan finished clear first in an excellent entry of 44, and all 105 games were shown on live boards. A full report has been added to the tournament section here.