Irish Championships: Some good Galway results

The Irish Championship, held in Limerick, has finished, being won by defending champion Colm Daly.  Philip Short followed up his second place in the Galway Rapidplay with second (equal) in the Irish: at one point it looked as if he would go one better this time, as he beat the leader in the penultimate round; but he could make no impression on Colm in the last round when he needed a win for outright victory, and so settled on a draw and a runner’s up spot.  John Cormican finished thirteenth, which is a good result, ahead of his seeding: he played some lively and inventive games and we will try to put some of them up in the Games section.  A full crosstable can be found at http://www.ulchess.com/Irish/, some games are available already on the Games section of the ICU web-site, and the rest should be up there eventually.

In the subsidary tournaments, Ruth Cormican put in an excellent performance in the PM tournament, winning second prize.  She also played in the AM (morning) tournament, but she seems not to be a morning person, as her score there was 2/5.  Also on two points were David Baird and John Hensey, whilst Paul Ward also scored 2 points in the under-2000 weekender tournament.