John Cormican playing for Irish Junior team

The Glorney Cup (the annual tournament between junior teams representing England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales) starts tomorrow (Sunday) in Wales.  The Irish team includes John Cormican, from Galway.  (Oissine Murphy was also selected for this team, but was unable to play.)  Unfortunately, for the first time for many years there is no representative from Galway in the Girls’ team.

You can follow John’s progress – and that of the Irish teams in general – at http://www.glorneycupchess.org/.  (This site is supposed to include live games from the Glorney Cup; but sometimes these live broadcasts don’t work as well as they are supposed to do.  I will try to update this with a report on how the site is working.)

Update: the live games do seem to be working, mostly – though the names of the players didn’t go up until an hour in, which made following John rather difficult.  He had a typically wild game, that somehow produced a competely symmetrical position after 14 moves except that John was minus a g-pawn.  Unfortunately there was nothing doing on the g-file and, if the live feed is to be believed, John dropped a rook a few moves later.  Ireland lost the match to Wales by 3-2, but there are still 5 rounds to go.

I should perhaps have added that the girls’ team includes Eibhia Ni Mhuireagain, who is from Connaught, although not Galway.  This competition is for girls under 18, but all three Irish players are 13, so we are clearly building well for the future.  In round one Ireland lost to Wales 2-1, in a bizarre match: Eibhia seems to have lost on time on board two after a hard-fought game that was level most of the time; Diana Mirza on board one outplayed her opponent throughout the game, winning a couple of pawns, but then overlooked a mate in one; and the board three game illustrated the old adage that one should never resign, as the Irish player turned a completely lost double rook and pawn endgame into a completely won one, with some considerable help from her opponent.  If you like watching roller-coaster chess, this is the place to be this weekend!