Blair Connell and IM Oleg Gubanov tied for first in the Ennis Congress last weekend on a score of 4.5 from 5 with both conceding draws to GM Bogdan Lalic, who came third on tiebreak on 4 points. This meant there was a blitz playoff to decide the winner of the Congress. Blair won the first blitz game with black against Olegs Ponziani opening, while Oleg won the second with black in a sharp Scandinavian. This meant there was an Armageddon playoff which Blair won with white to win the Congress.
Blair Connell receiving joint first prizeOleg Gubanov receiving joint first prize
Grading prizes in the Open were won by Kieran O’Brien (U1700) and James Scarry (U1400). The Marcel Castricum Cup was won by Christopher Woods on a perfect score of 5 out of 5, with Gabriel Mirza and Roy Marshall in second and third on tiebreak with 4 points. Grading prizes in this event were won by Tadhg Long (U1000) and Conor O’Sullivan (U701) both on 4 points.
There were upwards of 120 participants over the two events with players coming from all over Ireland and further afield to compete. There is a link to results and standings for all participants at the Limerick chess club site
A busy tournament hall at the start of the final round
The Ennis Congress takes place in the West County Hotel this weekend and it’s shaping up to be an interesting competition.
From the player lists at the moment, top seed in the Open is GM Bogdan Lalic on his first visit to play in the Ennis Congress and a nicer grandmaster you could not hope to meet. Second seed is Blair Connell who will be keen to add the Ennis Congress to his list of wins after tying for first in the recent Limerick Open, which was also held in Ennis. Third seed, FM Colm Daly has tied for first previously in this event and finished second in last years event. Fourth seed is the board 1 player for the Ennis team, IM Oleg Gubanov who is the strongest chess player to reside in Ennis since Gawain Jones lived here. Fifth seed is Paul Wallace, a strong player for many years, who I think is also playing in the Ennis Congress for the first time (though don’t hold me to that). Those are the top seeds but there are lots of others who can hope to do well, including the fast improving James Naughton who won the Limerick Open in a blitz playoff a few months ago.
In the U1400 event both Roy Marshall of Ennis chess club and Gabriel Mirza are among the top seeds. Both tied for first in the recent Limerick Open U1400 event. Also among the top seeds in this event are veteran player Tom O’Sullivan, Rahul Arun and Michael Finn.
For anybody looking to purchase chess equipment, FM Oscar Culbeaux who now lives in Ennis and plays with Ennis chess club will have a chess stall at the tournament. Oscar is also competing in the event and will be a tough opponent for anyone, as I can attest following some blitz games in Brogans recently!
Details received from Pat Twomey re the Mulcahy Memorial 2023 which was held in the Aula Maxima in UCC last weekend. Local IM Alex Lopez finished in first place on 5 points from 5 games in what was a multinational event with competitors from many different federations taking part including Netherlands, Serbia, Egypt, Germany, Croatia, India, Israel, Switzerland, Austria, France, Poland and the Ukraine.
In second place in the tournament was another local player, Sean Murphy, with third place shared between H.R. Manasa and Lukian Hushpit. Grading prizes in the A section were won by Len Hackett, Arthur Moull and Akshay Ranade. Grading prizes in the B section were won by Declan Vogt, Alexey Marchenko and James Melay and in the C section by Nitish Arun, Frederic Lefebvre and Joel Gillanders.
Alex Lopez receiving first prize in the Mulcahy from the tournament organiser Pat Twomey
The Ennis Chess Congress takes place in the West County Hotel in Ennis from the 24th to the 26th February. As usual there will be two sections, the Open and the U1400 Marcel Castricum Cup. You can enter the tournament at the Irish Chess Union website. The Limerick chess club website also carries details of the tournament.
It’s a busy time in the chess calendar and there are lots of tournaments taking place over the coming weeks starting with the Sligo Spring tournament next weekend 3rd-5th February, followed by the Mulcahy in Cork 10th-12th February, then the John Bolger Cup in Rathfarnham 17th-19th Feb, the Drogheda Congress from the 3rd-5th March, and the Galway Chess Congress 10th-12th March. That’s a tournament every weekend for the next 6 weeks!
A very happy 2023 to all readers. Hope this year is a good one for each of you. If you want to get your chess fix again after the festive break, there is a blitz this evening on the club channel on lichess.org at 7pm. John Cassidy is organising.
Some alcohol was drank, some chocolates were eaten, some chess was played and, most importantly, everyone had a good time at the clubs Christmas blitz held during the week. For the time control we thought that we were playing 5|3 but after a few rounds someone realised that once they were down to 5 seconds on the timer, their clock never went back above this time. The perils of automatic settings on chess clocks!
It seems we were actually playing some sort of Bronstein time control where players get up to a 3 second increment per move, but only to bring them back up to the time they had remaining at the beginning of the move. Unlike with the more usual incremental time controls therefore one cannot accumulate additional time by moving quickly. . It isn’t used that often but worked fairly well I thought and is not that different to a traditional 5|3 blitz except that the games finish faster.
There were 12 players and it was decided to run the blitz as an all-play-all, which was maybe a bit ambitious given the time control and that some had to leave early. Most players got 11 rounds in though and the winner at the end of the evening was IM Oleg Gubanov who won every game he played and finished on a perfect score. Yours truly finished in second a point behind Oleg (no prizes for guessing who my loss was to!) with Bogdan Neaga in third and Phil Timlin fourth.
The chess club for adult players is now meeting on Wednesday nights in the West County Hotel. There will be a Christmas blitz this Wednesday at 8pm. Contact John Cassidy 087 2495913 for more information.
The first two rounds of the new Munster League season took place this weekend. The B teams first match was called off so only the A team had a match as we played newly promoted Charleville.
Ennis A 5-0 Charleville 1. IM O. Gubanov 1-0 C. De Bunes 2. FM O. Culbeaux 1-0 J. McSweeney 3. FM R.Quinn 1-0 P.J. Rea 4. O. Murchadha 1-0 K. Cole 5. T Dunne Jr 1-0 D. Razc
In the second round we played CCYMS who were missing a few players and we came away with another match win, leaving us in first place in the table at the end of the first 2 rounds.
CCYMS 1.5-3.5 Ennis A 1. K. Moynihan 0.5-0.5 IM O. Gubanov 2. P. O’Donovan 0-1 FM O. Culbeaux 3. T. O’Leary 0-1 FM R. Quinn 4. P. Twomey 1-0 O. Murchadha 5. T. Myers 0-1 T Dunne Jr
The B team had a tough match in Round 2 playing Galway who just missed out on promotion in 2019/2020 season.
Ennis B 1.5-3.5 Galway 1. B. Neac 0-1 A. Drimbarean 2. J Cassidy 0.5-0.5 J. Rawlinson 3. R, Marshall 0-1 D. Rodriguez 4. J O’Sullivan 0-1 J. Blackwell 5. P. Timlin 1-0 M. Corless
Ennis Chess 