The draw has been made for the first round of the senior club championships, which takes place on Wednesday.
With 19 players in the field, we’ve invited the top junior rated under 1100 (Cal Nolan) to give an even first round.
As the tournament is an Open, there’s some big ratings gaps in the first round. Odhrán has a mere 462 points over Luke, which makes that the closest-matched tie of the round. It’s also one of only two games which, as far as I know, have taken place before – Luke beating Odhrán in the 2012 Frank Scott Shield. The other rematch is Alex v Desmond, 479 points of a gap now, but a draw when they met on board 1 in the final round in Gonzaga just five months ago. So there’s no guarantees in any of the games at all!
At the moment, we’ve an even number of players down for all rounds bar round 3. In the event of any player getting a full point bye (i.e. they can play, but they’ve no opponent due to an odd number of players that night), we’ll look to arrange a friendly with one of the juniors who just missed the cut (or with Dan O’Brien, if we can drag him away from playing in Parnell Park for the Dubs!). So there should be games for everyone on each night.
We get underway at 7:30, but we’d players to arrive a few minutes early so as to sort out entry fees and to go through the rules. After that, it’s straight down to battle!
The draw in full, with the first-named player playing white, is –
| Seed | Name | Rating | v | Seed | Name | Rating |
| 1 | Gerry O’Connell | 2088 | v | 11 | Eddie Gahan | 1410 |
| 12 | Stephen Cunningham | 1328 | v | 2 | Zdravko Manojlovic | 1896 |
| 3 | John Healy | 1869 | v | 13 | Anastasija Manojlovic | 1224 |
| 14 | Ger Healy | 1167 | v | 4 | Ciarán Ruane | 1657 |
| 5 | Alex Byrne | 1599 | v | 15 | Desmond Beatty | 1120 |
| 16 | Cal Nolan | 1043 | v | 6 | Kevin Burke | 1551 |
| 7 | Mihailo Manojlovic | 1485 | v | 17 | Mark Dennehy | 1019 |
| 18 | Luke Hayden | 994 | v | 8 | Odhrán McDonnell | 1456 |
| 9 | Ross Beatty | 1438 | v | 19 | Paddy Power | 796 |
| 20 | Des Carroll | Unr | v | 10 | Dylan Boland | 1421 |
First tie-break is head-to-head. Subsequent tie-breaks are to be confirmed pending whatever’s written into Ciarán’s computer programme for doing the draw!
There are two grading bands – Unr to 1200 and 1200 to 1500.
Best of luck and good chess to all!
stbenilduschessclub 
MBuch, Buch and progressive are all available.
MBuch first, then progressive I guess?
Best to leave out Buch cos of byes.
Or is it better to go with progressive because MBuch is only looking at three rounds instead of the more usual four?
Mbuch would be my preference. Who you played seems more informative than when you won. The field is small enough that submarining probably won’t be an issue.
Grand so.
Actually would a Bunratty style blitz playoff be more fun?
Well it is our competition; we can do what we want.
Though maybe that should only be for first spot. If you have three people tied for a grading prize, say, it might get awkward. You could have a lot of play-offs.
Ah yeah, just for first place. use tie breaks for anything else. We could start the last round at 7 maybe. It’d give some time for prize giving even if there’s no playoff.
Also, we would potentially be starting the play-off about a quarter past eleven. Would it be getting too late to run a play-off then? The last round is a school day and all I think.