Galway Rapidplay: Results

The 2022 Galway Rapidplay. held on Saturday 18 June at the Galway Bridge Centre, attracted 90 entries – about twice our previous highest number.  Nearly a third of these were playing in their first tournament, which indicates the enthusiasm that there is for chess at the moment.  If this continues, then Irish chess would seem to be in a very good place.

            The tournament was won by top-seed Colm Daly, who dropped just half a point – to Conall Hegarty.  Second equal, half a point behind, were S Anand Kumar and Rory Quinn.  In recognition of the large number of entries, we drastically increased the number of rating prizes and junior prizes, in each case from the advertised one up to four.  Rating prizes winners were: under-1500: Paul Ward and Jaiten Saini on 5 points; under-1000: Christopher Woods, also on 5 points; and unrated (for which there were two prizes): Gerard McLoughlin (again on 5 points) and Brian Gallagher (4½).  Under-18 prize-winners were Lukian Hushpit and Christopher Woods again (both on 5 points), with a four-way tie for the third prize between Maryna Petrenko, Patrick O’Keeffe, George Stack, and Patryk Brozynski (all 4½ points).  The under-12 prize was won by nine-year-old Vivaan Verlekar (4½ points).  Last, but definitely not least, the prize for the best female player was won by Alice O’Gorman, who was also fourth equal on 5½ points.  Unusually for such category-prizes, it was decided in a head-to-head last round match-up between the two leading candidates, Alice and Maryna Petrenko, in which Alice prevailed.

            Photographs of the prize winners, plus full standings and cross-table, are available here.