The City of Dublin Championships took place recently over the weekend of 8th – 10th September 2006. This year the championships moved to the Southside to the home of the Inchicore Chess Club in St. Michael’s Parish Centre, Emmet Road, Inchicore. A total of 69 players competed. Interestingly, there were a total of 18 different nationalities represented in the 4 sections.
All of the sections were keenly contested. There were 13 players competing in the Masters Section. The winner of the Section, and City of Dublin Champion for 2006 was Kilkenny’s Karl McPhillips on tie break from Mark Quinn IM, with both players on a score of 4.5/6. Third place went to Pavel Madynski on a score of 4/6, while Rory Quinn (Ennis) won a grading prize with a score of 3.5 out of six which included wins over the two IMs, in the tournament, Mark Quinn and Gavin Wall.
20 players contested the Majors Section which was won outright by Peter J. Hayes on a score of 5/6. Slawomir Jurkiewicz and Semyon Mkrtchjan finished second and third respectively on scores of 4.5/6 while the grading prize was won by David Grzymek.
The Challengers Section was very keenly contested by 18 players and resulted in a three way tie at the top with three players scoring 4.5/6. They were Ronan Sweeney, Tom O’ Sullivan and Senan Bannon with Ronan taking first place on tie break. Atanas Kouhtev took the grading prize with a score of 4/6.
The Juniors Section was also contested by 18 players and was won outright by Ciaran Walsh with the weekends highest score of 5.5/6.John Thompson finished in the runner-up spot with a score of 5/6 with Charles Barker finishing in 3rd position on 4.5/6. Gregory Bailey, Philip Maguire and John Costigan, who finished in 4th – 6th places respectively, were also amongst the prizes.
One interesting feature of the weekend was the fact that two players fell foul of the new FIDE rules concerning mobile phones ringing during games, despite warnings to all players at the beginning of each round to turn off mobile phones. Both players were in contention for the top prizes in their sections until the incidents occurred and the games involved were awarded to their opponents. There were also two incidents concerning disputes about the “touch piece” rule not being observed.
All-in-all the competition, while down in numbers compared to 2005, was very successful and the playing venue, inclusive of the great hospitality provided by the Parish Centre’s volunteers, was excellent.
Games and photographs from the event are also available on the website.
Pat Fitzsimons
September 2006.
Download the games from here
Pictures from the City of Dublin (note: popups since it is free webspace!