Jan Heinrich wins the Paddy Hennessy 2012

Jan Heinrich followed up his impressive win in the Bunratty challengers last weekend by winning the Paddy Hennessy rapidplay in Kilfinane this evening. Jan beat Michael O Donnell in a close match in the final. Kilfinane put in an impressive showing in this years event with 3 of the 4 semi finalists including Paddys son Padraig.

Hopefully I will have a report from Mike or Vinny to add to the blog. I am away next week so updates might be slow for a little while.

Paddy Hennessy Cup

Don’t forget this event takes place tomorrow night in Henry McCarthys bar in Kilfinane, it’s always a really fun event to play in. You can see past reports of 2011 event here and the 2010 event here. Dont forget to contact Vinny O Donnell if you want to play 087 7434182.

By the way the C team had a good win in their first match of the Munster League Division 2 recently with a 4-1 win over Shannon. Their next match is in early March against Dungarvan. I have received games from Mike O Donnell and Tony Aherne from the last round of the Munster League and I hope to post a report soon. If either captain can update me on how their other results went it would be good because I missed this round.

Other upcoming tournaments include the Cork congress towards the end of March and the Dublin e2-e4 Easter international.

Adams, Short and Jones tie for first in Bunratty

There was a 3 way tie for first in the recent Bunratty masters tournament. Michael Adams, Nigel Short and Gawain Jones all tied for first on 5 from 6. The top two players on tiebreak, Adams and Short, had a blitz playoff and Michael Adams won to claim the tile of Bunratty Masters Champion 2012. It seems like a few players overindulged on the Saturday night as there were some defaults on the Sunday morning including Andrei Istratescu in an important game against Gawain Jones. Kieran O Driscoll downed so much rum at the bar in the Saturday night that he defaulted his first game ever on the Sunday morning. I also apparently defaulted a game (also for the first time ever in all the hundreds of games I have played) in slightly strange circumstances on the Sunday afternoon despite checking with one of the arbiters that it was ok for me to leave and having been told I wouldn’t be included in the draw for the last round. Meanwhile I had headed back to Ennis, my car broke down on the way and I spent 2 hours stuck on the motorway and my car is now in the scrappage yard. Just to top things off I saw today that I had been included in the draw after all by mistake and defaulted my game.

Anyway back to the Ennis results and Ljubica Cirkovic had a great result winning the Major tournament on 5.5 from 6. Herickson da Silva finished on 3 out of 6 and James Danaher from Shannon finished joint second in this section. Players competing in the minor were Padraig McCullough, Rob Wall, Stephen Meaney, and Andrew Ingram who finished on 3,3.5, 3.5 and 4 respectively. Kieran O Brien and Gerry Casey competed in the challengers which was won in fine style by Jan Heinrich, congratulations Jan! Clare junior players Cian Wall and Dara Flynn competed in the minor and scored 2 and 1.5 respectively. I hope I haven’t left anyone out, feel free to remind me if I have. Check out Gerry Grahams report over at the ICU website for a comprehensive report including games. The tournament seems to have been a huge success with the live games attracting an audience from all over the world. I am sure we will see some more reports on chess news sites in the coming days.

By the way don’t forget the Paddy Hennessy blitz taking place in Kilfinane this Saturday night. It’s sure to be a cracking event. Contact Vincent O Donnell on 087 7434182 for more information. If there are any Ennis players out there with a working car who feel like playing and can give Cassidy and/or myself a lift it would be greatly appreciated

Bunratty kicking off tonight

Good luck to everybody taking part in Bunratty this weekend in what must be the strongest ever chess tournament (definitely the strongest ever weekender anyway) in Ireland. Click here for live games from the event. For updates on the tournament go to the Bunratty website. I got a grand handy one in the first round anyway 4th seed and last years Bunratty champion GM Gawain Jones. I have played Gawain a number of times in weekend tournaments and I have a grand total of one flukey draw to show for my efforts (it was a long time ago, he must have been having an off day that day). Lets just say I am not too optimistic for this evenings game, I just hope I can stay on the board longer than the last time we played in the Galway congress when I was blown away in about 15 moves!

Short simul a great success!

Well its after 2am and Nigel Shorts exhibition has just finished in the Auburn Lodge. Nigel started with a lecture featuring his game against Sasikiran from the recent Gibraltar tournament, a game which in tandem with his win over You Hifan in the next round, netted him a cool £24000. This was a g3 benoni and it was instructive how easy Nigel made the whole game appear to be while giving insights into his thinking about the position.

Nigel Short going through his game with Saskirian from Gibraltar

28 players from Ennis, Limerick and Galway turned up to do battle in the simultaneous after the lecture and there were also a few spectators. The final result for Nigel was +25, =3 which was pretty good considering he must have been fairly tired after his simul in Dublin last night and travelling. Although I should mention he won all his games in Dublin last night, so technically Ennis have outperformed Dublin in the chess stakes so far this week

A captive audience!

Draws were achieved by James Danaher, John Cormican (who at one stage looked like he was winning his game) and yours truly. Optically I thought my position looked reasonably good when I accepted the draw (edit actually having played around a little bit with the position on stockfish it seems completely balanced so taking the draw was the right option despite the urging of some of the kibitzers around me to play on) Thanks to everyone who took part in this event and helped make it a success, especially those who travelled from outside Ennis to play. Well done to John Cassidy on organising the event and also Gary O Grady who ensured it was possible to bring Nigel to Ennis and seemingly managed to fall asleep during his game in the simul before being awakened by the timely arrival of a pint courtesy of John Cassidy. Finally thanks to Nigel himself, he will get a well earned rest tomorrow to recharge his batteries before this weekends Bunratty tournament.

Let battle commence

Paddy Hennessy Chess Blitz – February 25th

Some information received from Vinny O Donnell about this years Paddy Hennessy chess blitz. This event will take place on Saturday 25th February in its customary venue Henry McCarthys bar in Kilfinane. The entry fee is a bargain at only 8 euro.

Time Control: Length of each match is 20 minutes. 10 minutes a side for players of equal rating. There is a time handicap in place to level the playing field. For every 100 points rating difference between the players 1 minute is taken from the higher rated players allotted playing time and added to the lower rated players. This is subject to a maximum limit of 18 minutes vs 2 minutes. For example Player A 1200 rating points vs player B 1400 rating points (rating are rounded to the nearest 100th number) the time for Player A in this scenario would be 12 minutes and player b would have 8 minutes.

General rules
1) Touch a piece move a piece.
2) In the event of players finishing on the same points total in their groups, players will have a 2 minute aside playoff and no time handicap applies in this scenario.
3) The onus is on the lower rated player to verify the time handicap.
4) Any unforseen events shall be clarified by the tournament organisers Vincent and Michael O Donnell.

Contact Vinny on 087 7434182 with any queries or if you need more information.

I am in Copenhagen at the moment so I missed the Ennis Munster League matches yesterday but John Cassidy has kept me uptodate by text. The A team lost to Sarsfield 3-2 and beat Charleville 3-2. The B team are starting to get motoring after their slow start to the season and had 2 draws yesterday against the same opposition. Hopefully a report will follow from one of the players shortly.

Nigel Shorts Ennis simul filling fast.

John Cassidy informs me that places for Nigel Shorts simultaneous exhibition and lecture in Ennis next week are filling fast and there are less than 10 paces left. So if considering booking a place don’t delay too long. Contact John on 087 2495913 to reserve your seat. This event is open to anyone with an interest in chess no matter your playing strength so I would encourage anyone who is thinking about it, just give it a go!

Please note that the times for the events in the Adult Education Centre have changed slightly since I last posted. The board and card games night will take place from 7pm -9pm on Tuesday 21st Feb and the clubs and societies night from 7-8.30pm on Thursday 23rd Feb.

If you haven’t seen it already there is now a report by Herbert Scarry on the recent Gonzaga tournament (including all the games from the Masters section on the Irish Chess Union website. Congrats to David Fitzsimons on his win. Looks like it was a really good tourney.

Adult Learners Festival

Clare VEC Adult Educaton Service is running a number of events as part of the Adult Learners Festival which may be of interest to readers of this blog.I thought I would mention 2 in particular. The first is an evening of board, mind/puzzle and card games in the Adult and Community Education Centre in Clonroad Business Park, Ennis on Tuesday 21st February from 7pm to 9pm. Any of you in the Ennis area why not drop by for a while and play some blitz or try out something else like draughts, go, poker, backgammon or one of the many other games available.

The second is a local clubs and societies night which will take place in the same location on Thursday 23rd February from 7pm to 8.30pm. This is a chance to find out more about local sports clubs and social clubs in the Ennis area. You might be surprised at the amount of inexpensive local activities that are out there, things like drama, poetry, writing, GAA, bridge, soccer…who knows the chess club might even have a table there. You need never find yourself at a loose end again!

Short simul in Ennis

Earlier today John Cassidy sent me details of the lecture and simultaneous display by former World Championship Challenger Nigel Short that John is organising in Ennis. This will take place on Wednesday 15th February (Wednesday before Bunratty) in the Auburn Lodge hotel and will cost €25. Places are limited to 25 people so if you want to play please contact John asap on 087 2495913.

There are a lot of exhibitions and simultaneous displays taking place around this time, Michael Adams in Cork and Nigels other simul in Dublin as well as the events organised by Gabriel Mirza in Limerick. However for anyone in the Ennis/Clare area the Short exhibition is one not to be missed. A colourful and sometimes outspoken character this is sure to be an entertaining event. How often will you get the chance to play a former world championship challenger, someone who has defeated 12 World Champions so far in the course of his career? One of the first proper books I read on chess was one a teenage Nigel wrote with his father which containing entertaining annotations of some of his early games and it made a big impression on me.

Meanwhile the debate about the reasons for the apparent gender difference in chessplayng ability rumbles on over at chessbase. Interesting to see that a lot of the comments seem to disagree with the societal influence view suggested by the article authors and go with the idea that men are biologically programmed to perform better in intellectual spheres than women. Can’t say I really agree too much with the biological viewpoint for example why do girls continue to consistently outperform boys academically (at least in Ireland anyway) if this is the case? At the other extreme chessbase’ Frederic Friedel suggests that the reason is due to girls, as they start to become older, being distracted from chess by potential suitors trying to woo them (! seriously folks). In my view to call this an oversimplification would be an understatement.