Galway players do well in Bunratty

A number of Galway players travelled down to play in the Bunratty Congress (Ireland’s largest and strongest weekend tournament) last weekend, and in general we put up a good account of ourselves.

In the top section (the Masters) Oissine Murphy scored 2½ points out of 6 – a very good result, since all Oissine’s opponents were rated a good bit higher than he was.  In this section, one of the stars of the show was Galway-based Phillip Short, who put in an excellent performance, winning the prize for best untitled Irish player, and beating Irish Number One, Alex Baburin; Phillip scored 3½ – which is particularly good when one considers that, of his six opponents, two were grandmasters and another two international masters.

In the second section (under-2000), three of our members scored 3 points: Paul Ward, Jason Rawlinson, and Pete Morriss (who got his three points from only four games; he didn’t play on the Sunday, in order to attend a funeral); David Baird got 2 points, starting with a fine win, but not quite managing to keep that up.  Paul Ward’s results are particularly meritorious, as he is actually rated below the supposed floor for the section: he gained 34 rating points from his efforts, which was the second highest gain in the section.

In the under-1600 section, there was a very fine performance from Kenneth Higgins, who came second equal on 5/6.  Ger Abberton finished on 3 points, and Kevin Fitzpatrick on 2.

Finally, in the under-1200s, David Piercey didn’t quite manage to repeat his exploits in the Galway Congress, finishing on 2½ points.