For the third year in a row and the fourth time ever Ennis chess club will represent Ireland at the European Club Cup which will be held this year in Plovdiv in Bulgaria from the 16th to 24th October 2010. We qualified for the tournament by finishing third in the National Club Championships which was held in the Green Isle Hotel in Dublin earlier in the year. Once again the teams who won the 2 qualifying spots (this year Bray and Kilkenny) decided not to (or were unable to) send a team so Ennis were given the chance to participate which we took. We had thought alll our players from the National Club Championships would be able to travel but due to unforseen circumstances it appears Marek Goban has pulled out and for a while it was looking like Zaidan Zulkipli would also not travel which would really have left us up the proverbial without a paddle. However it seems Zaidan is onboard again now which is great news. Mareks replacement, DJ O Donoghue, will not arrive til midweek so its looking like our supposed non playing captain will get to play a few games after all 🙂
We are seeded 44th out of 49 teams on the tournament website with an average rating of 2155 and a squad of P Neuman IM, J Sodoma, M Goban, R Quinn, Z Zulkipli, DJ O Donoghue, Nick Larter, Mike O Donnell and John Cassidy (Captain). As it seems Marek won’t travel our seeding might fall as his replacement DJ does not have a rating for the purposes of this event. The Greek team behind us have an average of 2108 so even without Marek we may stay ahead of them but I am not sure.
It is too early to speculate who we will play in round 1, I tried it last year and got it wrong. There are usually a few late additions to the draw which makes predicting your round 1 opponent difficult. We will most likely be playing quite a strong team, last year we got a Lithuanian team who at one stage later on in the tournament were playing on the dizzy heights of board 4 against Nisipeanu, Adams and co. The organisers have indicated that live games will be broadcast on chessdom. You can also get uptodate information on the teams and standings at chess results
Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Round 4
Round 5
Round 6
Round 7
Sending a team that includes foreign titled players to the European Club Cup is an expensive business. Our team budget is absolutely minisucle in comparison to others but every little helps and we would like to say thanks to Austin Slattery and the Munster Chess Union for their financial support. Also to our captain John Cassidy who ensured everything went smoothly apart from one unforseen blip which was difficult to predict or do much about!
