Easter results

Two Irish players made norms at the recent Easter tournaments in Dublin, winning their sections in the process. IM Alex Lopez made a GM norm. After starting somewhat slowly he won his last 5(!) games to win the tournament and make a norm. A little bit reminiscent of his performance in the Irish Championships last year when he won his last 4 games to tie for first. In the IM tournament FM Conor O’Donnell made an IM norm and won the tournament. Details at chess results and the ICU site.

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Mulcahy Results and Wijk aan Zee

IM Alex Lopez won the Mulcahy Cup last weekend in Cork on an impressive score of 6 out of 6. Kieran Moynihan and Henry Li finished in joint second/third on 5. Full results available at Cork Chess.

Former Ennis chess player GM Gawain Jones is currently mixing it with the Worlds elite chessplayers in the Masters section at the Tata Steel Memorial. The event mainly takes place in Wijk aan Zee but there are also rounds taking place in Hilversum and Groningen. Gawain qualified for the event by winning the Challengers last year at the first time of asking and despite being the lowest seeded player is currently doing pretty well on 2.5 from 5.

Play resumes tomorrow after a rest day today. There are still 8 rounds to go and it is difficult to predict a winner at this stage as there is only a single point or less separating the first 11 players who are all bunched together between 2.5 and 3.5 from 5. GM Anton Korobov is leading the Challengers section. Live games available at the tournament website.

5 way tie in the first weekender

There was a 5 way tie for first in the first of the weekenders in the Irish Championships which finished earlier today. Ravshan Khadyarov, John McMorrow, Eoin Govers, Martin Crichton and Jan Heinrich all scored 4 out of 5. An excellent result in particular for Eoin Govers who posted a performance rating more than 600 points higher than his current rating and will likely pick up a lot of rating points.

Live boards were down in the Irish Senior Championships today as owing to noise in a nearby room the players had to move rooms shortly after the start of the round. Things should be back to normal tomorrow. Links to results and pairings from all tournaments so far are available at the Irish Chess Union website.

So wins US Chess Championships

Wesley So has just won the US Chess Championships beating the surprise package Alex Onischuk in a playoff after both finished tied on 7 points. Caruana, Nakamura and Akobian were all tied a half point further back on 6.5 in what was a competitive tournament.

A little closer to home there are norm tournaments taking place in Tralee later this week with Collins and Lopez going for norms in the GM tournament while those battling for norms in the IM tournament include O’Donnell, Daly, Delaney and Li.

In the Irish Junior Championships which finished in Sligo last weekend, Limericks James Naughton put in a fine performance to win the U14 outright on 5.5 points while Denis Ruchko who played for Ennis in the last round of the Munster League came joint first in the U19s. Next years Irish Junior Championships will be held in Ennis.

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