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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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© Dr Tim Harding
Last modified:
14 August 2024
Congratulations to IM David Fitzsimons who has won the 103rd Irish Championship played at the Talbot Hotel, Stillorgan, Dublin, from 3-11 August. He was unbeaten, conceding just three draws for a score of seven and a half points from 9 rounds.
See our main Irish news page for the advance announcement of dates and venue for the 2025 championship.
Fitzsimons led the tournament throughout and secured outright first place on Sunday with a draw after 50 minutes play, Black against Oisin O'Cuilleanain, in the last round.
This was Fitzsimons's first win in the championship and guarantees him a place on the Irish 2026 olympiad team. He is already selected for the 2024 event which takes place in Budapest next month.
The title had been virtually decided in Saturday's round 8 when 33-year-old Fitzsimons won while his closest rivals Baburin and Venkatesan drew their game.
You can find below our round by round summary of what happened in the top games.
It is already possible to find all the results of the tournament via a link on the ICU website and ICU members can download a PGN file with all the games from there. You can also see further information about the championship, including the final scores of all players, at Sean Coffey's Irish chess history website.
There were 53 starters but Conor O'Donnell and Gavin Sheehan withdrew early. Several others withdrew later but 44 competitors played all nine rounds, which is still larger than the field in most previous years.
The top female player was Alice O'Gorman with 5/9, performing slightly above her rating, which is encouraging for the olympiad. Two other female team members (Antonina Gora and Lara Putar) also participated and scored 4.5, also above par for their rating (significantly so in Lara's case).
It is noteworthy that the field included many players under 18 years of age but also several who are over 65 and still playing to a high standard (as our seniors news below also testifies).
The youngest competitors were Nitish Arun and Maxim Lorigan, who were born in 2012. Andrey Ivanov (who also played the Championship last year) and Yannick Woods were born in 2011 and Gavin Govindaraju was born in 2010.
Several players in the tournament were born in 2009: Jason Liu, Oliver Barnes, Gavin Sheehan, Rafael Ninan Renji, and Ukrainian refugee Lukian Hushpit who was the top scorer in this age group.
The oldest player in the field, 1975 Irish Champion Tony Doyle, was born in 1949; he finished on 50 per cent (4.5 points) which was the best score among the over-65s. The generous time limit in the Irish Championship, which can lead to very long games, undoubtedly gives some advantage to the younger players over the seniors who tend to tire in the fourth hour of play.
One conclusion to be drawn from this is that the future of Irish chess is quite healthy and includes several players of international heritage. The other is that students and pensioners can spare the time in summer, but very few strong players who have young families or busy careers can afford to take a precious week of holidays to play the championship.
Certainly the strength of this tournament has been, on paper, weaker than many recent championships (partly because it's an Olympiad year) but even if most of our other IMs and FMs had been playing, Fitzsimons would quite likely still have won.
In round one, there were no huge shocks although some games were drawn and the lower-rated player won a couple of the games lower down the list.
In round 2, Baburin was held to a draw by Oisin O'Cuilleanain.
The top games in round 3 finished as follows: Adam Collins 0 Fitzsimons 1; Shane Melaugh drew with Jason Liu; James Crowley drew with Kavin Venkatesan; Baburin 1 Jacob Flynn 0. So Baburin now has 2.5/3 and Flynn 2/3.
In Tuesday's round 4, the top seed and defending champion GM Alexander Baburin played a neat tactical combination to win quickly with Black against Cathal Keenan. In the other top games, Jason Liu drew with James Crowley and Kavin Venkatesan beat Peter Carroll.
We also noted that young Patryk Brozynski defeated FM Colm Daly, a multiple former Irish champion, and student Adam Collins beat Tony Doyle, the 1975 Irish champion who has only returned to competitive play in the last couple of years.
In round 5, Fitzsimons came under pressure from Baburin in the middle game but bailed out by sacrificing the exchange for a pawn and managed to defend the resulting endgame.
In other games involving players who were on 1.5/2, Conor O'Donnell lost to Cathal Keenan, Colm Daly drew with Tony Doyle, Peter Carroll beat Gerry O'Connell; David Geaney-O'Brien v O'Cuilleanain was drawn.
In round 6, Fitzsimons drew with Kavin Venkatesan to retain the lead by half a point with 5/6. Adam Collins drew with defending champion GM Alex Baburin.
In the only decisive game on the top six boards, Jacob Flynn beat Patryk Brozynski and so Flynn joins Baburin, Collins and Venkatesan in the chasing group.
In the dramatic round 7 Fitzsimons was involved in a very complicated game as Black against CM Jacob Flynn. With kings castled on opposite wings, Fitzsimons offered his h-pawn as a sacrifice for open lines. Perhaps unwisely, Flynn took the bait and ultimately fell victim to a crushing attack down the h-file.
By the time that game ended, GM Alex Baburin had won against Shane Melaugh and FM Kavin Venkatesan had a winning rook ending against Adam Collins which he duly converted.
There was also a decisive game on the fourth board, teenager Jason Liu beating FM Colm Daly. The next two boards (involving players on 4 points) were drawn but Oisin O'Cuilleanain beat Lara Putar to catch up on 4.5.
In round 8, Fitzsimons, playing White against teenager Jason Liu's French Defence, provoked an exchange sacrifice which the computers show was objectively somewhat favourable for Black. But Liu's follow-up was imprecise and then he then made a fatal blunder allowing White to return the material for a mating attack.
The board 2 game between GM Baburin and teenager FM Kavin Venkatesan was afterwards soon agreed drawn. These two remain joint second on 6/8. Oisin O'Cuilleanain is alone on 5.5/8 after beating Peter Carroll today. A very large group on 5/8 will need to win in the last round if they hope to get a prize.
Fitzsimons only needed a draw in round 9 to become Irish Champion for the first time. Playing Black against Oisin O'Cuilleanain, he adopted the drawish Rubinstein Variation of the French Defence. They raced through the first 15 moves in as many minutes before a few cautious moves followed until the result was agreed.
GM Alex Baburin defeated FM Colm Daly to finish second on 7/9 while 16-year-old FM Kavin Venkatesan finished in sole third on six and a half points. After losing a pawn Kavin had to fight hard to achieve a draw against Atharva Paibir.
O'Cuilleanain ended on six points in a tie for fourth place along with four players who won their last round games. This was an excellent result for the 20-year-old former Irish junior champion who went into the event as the 12th ranked player with a 2100 FIDE rating.
There were last round wins for FM James Crowley, CM Shane Melaugh, CM Jacob Flynn and Lukian Hushpit who all joined him on six points.
In a week or two, we shall probably split off this championship report to a separate archive page. A lot of old news items have now been removed.
The Talbot Hotel in Stillorgan, Dublin, was also the venue for several other competitions over a ten day period.
Gabriel Landmark (born 2007, FIDE rating 1710) was the surprise winner with 4.5/5 of the Open Weekender, played from 9-11 August, were still unavailable. Eight players including top seed FM John Delaney tied second on 4/5.
The traditional concluding blitz tournament, played on Sunday night, attracted a field of 88. It ended in an impressive win for WIM Trisha Kanyamarala with 10/11 ahead of Oleg Artemenko (Uzbekistmn) 9.5 points and IM Sam Collins 9. Trisha lost to Sam but won all her other games, defeating several of the strong players from the main championship.
The two senior tournaments had quite small fields, probably because several senior players were competing in the main championship. Serhii Prykhodchenko (rated 1806) won the 65+ tournament with 4.5/5, a clear point ahead of Eugene Donohue and Stefan Baczowski in a field of 14. Ten players contested the 40+ tournament which Gerard Buckley won with 4/5.
The Weekday Open tournament, played in the mornings, ended on Friday. There were 37 competitors and it was won outright by Sebastian Mirek with 4.5/5.
The first weekend Major tournament for players rated 1650-2000 was won by 1726-rated Amirhossein Zarbakhsh with 5/5. There were 45 competitors. Unrated Chima Mgbemena won the first weekend Challenger, also with 5/5 in a field of 54 players.
The clash with the Olympic Games in Paris (especially the athletics) has probably a lot to do with the lower take-up of entries for the subsidiary tournaments this year compared with 2023.
Back to our main Irish news page.