A look back at Irish chess history!

This is the first installment of a series of articles on Cork's first international chess tournament. This is a work in progress as I am still researching so I begin with a brief introduction.


An Tostal 1955 Chess Congress was the first International tournament held in Cork. It was run as part of An Tostal celebrations which were inaugurated in 1953. The original purpose of An Tostal festival was a celebration of Irish culture, with the dual purpose of drawing tourists into the country during the Easter off-season. It was marked by a series of regional parades, arts and sporting events. Many towns began a clean-up plan thus began the National Tidy Town Awards.
Chess Competitions were held as part of An Tostal by the Irish Chess Union from 1954 to 1957. The 1957 event was one of the greatest Chess events ever held in Ireland and more will be written on that subject at a later date.

The 1955 event was organized by Enda Rohan and controlled by J.B. Olden. It was run from Thursday 12th May through to Thursday 19th May. Play was held in the C.Y.M.S. Little Theatre, Castle Street, Cork. Play began at 6.30 p.m each day with any adjournment played the following day at 2.30 p.m.

The international players included Dr. Osip Bernstein of France (The "Grand Old Man" of Chess). Mr T. D. van Scheltinga (Holland), Count O'Kelly de Galway (Belgium), and Mr. B.H. Wood (England). The Irish contingent comprised of Noel Mulcahy, John Reid, J.J. Walsh and D. O'Sullivan.

The international players were received by the Lord Mayor (Ald. P. McGrath TD) at the City Hall on Thursday 12th May. Also present were Miss H. Chater (Belfast) the Irish Ladies Champion, Noel Mulcahy Cork former Irish Champion, John Reid, Munster, J.N. Olden Tournament Controller. T. Cullen, C.Y.M.S. and W.J. O'Connell.
Three other events were run in conjunction with the International tournament. These were the Tostal Open, the Reserves, and the Munster Schoolboys Championship.

There ends the first installment, plenty of more ahead! I hope it has inspired interest.

Ireland's strongest Chess player?

When looking back on Irish Chess history the question arises who was Ireland's strongest chess player? You could take the amusing route and say Paul Morphy! Edward Winter in Chess Notes claims that the Morphy coat-of-arms is the same as that of Murphy's Stout. The site states: 'Thus the Morphy and Murphy family histories are shown to be inextricably linked'. I'm willing to say he was an Irishman!
Next flight of imagination - some books (incorrectly) claim that Steinitz won the Irish Championship in 1865! Therefore we may also be able to claim Steinitz.

OK! I'll leave the realms of fantasy now and settle for players born in Ireland. The choices available are Alexander MacDonnell (1798-1835), James Mason (1849-1905), and CHOD Alexander (1909-1974).

Alexander MacDonnell was of course famous for his series of matches against Labourdonnais. When looked at as a series of matches then MacDonnell could be considered as the unofficial world chess champion for a period after winning the second match. Also MacDonnell was leading in the last match when it was aborted.

My knowledge of James Mason is vague but Wikipedia states that research by Chessmetrics gives his chess strength at ELO 2715 and claim he was number one in the world between August 1877 and June 1878. (Wow, didn't know that!) Here's one for Carey! The opening 1.d4 d5 2.Bf4 is sometimes called the Mason Variation in his honour; he played it several times from the 1880s.

Finally CHOD Alexander. Though not in the same league as the above his claim to greatness must rest on his win against Botvinnik in the 1946 USSR-Great Britain radio match. Botvinnik was considered the best player in the world at this time.

This is just a brief look at this interesting question. Each of these players deserves to be examined on their own merits. In future articles I'm going to present a potted biography of each and present some of their best games.

The Lucena Position.

I present one of the two most important positions in Rook and pawn endgames. Why is this position so important to understand? Well, consider that rook endings are the most common in chess (accounting for nearly 60% of all endgames) and often a material imbalance of a mere pawn occurs which carries over to the endgame. Knowledge of this type of ending is essential to the practical chess player.

Hastings Masters 2009 - 10

Three Irish players took part in the recently completed Hastings Masters tournament. They were IM Sam Collins, Ryan Griffiths, and James McDonnell. I think Collins and McDonnell will surely want to forget the whole experience. However, the performance of Ryan Griffiths deserves the highest praise. He finished on 5.5/9 and had a performance rating of 2350!

The progress table below gives some idea of this fantastic performance.



I post a few of Ryan Griffiths games from the event. Starting with his round four encounter with IM Andrew Martin. I don't know about you (there's no accounting for taste), but in the final position I certainly prefer Black.



And now Ryan's round five win against FM Webb.



I conclude with his eight round fighting draw with IM Kolbus.



I am really blown away by this performance. Will Ryan Griffiths be Ireland’s first home grown Grandmaster?

Mulcahy Memorial 2010

Well done to Mick Bradley, Peter Doyle, and Stephen Short for running the event. The tournament attracted an entry of 50 players, and was hosted in the Cork Bridge Club. It was a six round Swiss event with a time limit of 90 minutes for all moves. The top seeds were Paul Walsh and David Path.

Round one
Move along nothing to see here - all the top boards went as expected.

Round two.
The news of this round was NM Eamon Keogh’s draw!. Eamon was unlucky to encounter a well prepared Denis O’Connell. The game deserves study if you have to answer Eamon's 1.f4 in the future.



Round three.
Missed this round so I can’t really report on any of the games at the moment.

Round four.
In this round Paul Walsh’s winning hopes began to falter when he conceded his first draw to Kieran O’Riordan. From this point on Paul didn't appear to be creating any real problems for his opponents.



In comparison David Path played a great game against Arnaud Aoustin and now appeared to be the man to watch.

Round five.
On board one Stephen Short broke David Path’s winning streak. Paul Walsh conceded another draw to Paul Kiely.
Going into the last round Stephen Short was leading with 4.5 points however he could hear the baying of a pack on four points! These included Paul Walsh, Eamon Keogh and David Path.

Round six.
On top board Stephen Short produced a tense game against Paul Walsh, but was forced to concede the draw in the end. This was done with great reluctance as Eamon Keogh had already defeated David Path. Eamon converted his advantage of two bishops and queen against two knights and queen with great skill. On board four Kieran O’Riordan (definitely one to watch!) also had a nice win against Arnaud Aoustin. On board five Paul Kiely produced the following nice game.



Results:
Joint first - Stephen Short & Eamon Keogh 5/7 - Stephen awarded title on tie break.
Joint Third - Kieran O Riordain, Paul Walsh, Paul Kiely, Hugh Doyle 4.5.
David v Goliath - Keegan O Mahoney win over David O Kelly R1.
Rating performance - Tony Dalton.
Grading prizes : John Connolly, Connor O Donnell, Wim van Hookstad, Pat Twomey.

Two Bishop Mate

Where to begin? the choices are huge. Unless I pick something this blog will never get started. So I'm going to jump in with something easy.

Here is an instructional video which shows one technique for mating with the two bishops against lone king. I know it's not the quickest method, but it appears to be the simplest! Watch this video before a tournament or every couple of months and it could just win you a game.