The European Club Cup finished last Sunday in Mayrhofen, Austria. After 7 rounds Ennis finished in 60th place out of the 70 competing teams. So, we finished a little below our initial seeding of 56th. A major factor in this was losing our board 1 to illness halfway through the tournament. Simon wasn’t feeling well from the start of the tournament but was still playing well and we had reached 33rd place before he had to withdraw. This meant the rest of the team had to play up a board in the remaining matches which obviously made our task more difficult. Also, in some matches we didn’t capitalise on the chances we did get. Overall, it was a mixed performance by the team. Highlights for the team were probably Round 4 where we beat a higher ranked Austrian team and Round 1 where we competed well with a much higher ranked Dutch team Our round-by-round results are below. Full results for the tournament are at chess results.
- Ennis 2.5 – 3.5 LSG Leiden 1 (Netherlands)
- Ennis 2 – 4 Viking CC (Iceland)
- Ennis 3.5 – 2.5 Gonzaga (Ireland)
- Ennis 4 -2 SK Zell/Zillertal (Austria)
- Ennis 1-5 De Plus Pion Wachtebeke (Belgium)
- Ennis 2-4 Amevo Apeldoorn (Netherlands)
- Ennis 2-4 Drejtesia (Kosovo)
I was happy with my own performance scoring 5 out of 7 with a rating performance of 2319 and making the FM title, which was a nice bonus! It could have been even better, as one of my losses was on time a couple of moves before the time control in an unclear position and in the other, I over pressed in a position where I had a bind after my opponent defended well.
With more places open to Irish teams in the competition than ever before, the European Club Cup represents a great opportunity for Irish players to test themselves against strong opposition. Next year’s tournament is due to take place in Albania, I’d highly recommend Irish clubs to go and compete.
Ennis Chess 
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