Gerry still top of the pile

The final round of the club championships confirmed that nothing has changed in the eight years since our last competition – Gerry is still king.

There was plenty to play for in the final round – any of the top nine had a chance of sneaking into third place, while Desmond v Eddie was a straight shoot-out for different grading prizes. John had to pull out late due to work, which gave Stephen a second bye of the tournament (though he made short work of Richard O’Rahilly in a friendly!), but the first full game finished was, as so often, Eddie’s. And it gave us our first upset of the round as Eddie’s Pirc Modern went horribly wrong, with Desmond getting a pawn to e6 and then to f7, opening up all sorts of light-squared weaknesses, which Desmond’s bishop and queen were more than happy to infiltrate. The win was confirmed within about 45 minutes, more or less confirming Desmond’s grading prize (Des could draw level if he beat Odhrán, but tie break would probably tell against him). With three hours still remaining till the prizegiving, Desmond retreated to another room to browse through Nimzowitch’s My System. A doubly productive evening!

In the battle to avoid the wooden spoon, Paddy seemed to have a decent position against Cal, but when next I looked (at around move 9 in my game, it being nicely wild for once!), Cal had claimed victory. Meanwhile, Odhrán picked up an exchange against Des and converted clinically enough despite Des’ last-ditch not-so-subtle mate threat, meaning Des’ grading prize hopes were over while Odhrán was in with a shout in his own grading band. He was helped when Zdravko saw off Dylan on board 4, meaning the grading prize was now between Odhrán, Ross and Mihailo.

The remaining four boards were all very tight affairs. On 7, Mark was putting up a real fight against Anastasija, who had gotten nothing out of a Caro-Kann exchange which had drifted into a rook and pawn ending. I, knowing Mihailo would have booked up on the King’s Gambit accepted, decided to take things out of book early on by playing the Bishop’s Gambit for the first time ever (1. e4 e5 2. f4 ef 3. Bc4) – it’s supposedly better than 3. Nf3 and tempts the unwary opponent into 3. … Qh4+?!, which is what happened. In a rather slow-paced game – it took over two hours for the first 15 moves or so – I built up a bit of an attack, but then stupidly gave up a pawn I knew I couldn’t afford to and got into trouble, a pawn down with a protected passed pawn on e4 wedged in my position. Ross and Alex were renewing acquaintances from a double-header at the recent Irish championships and had a fairly level position, while Gerry had opted for an exchange sac against Ciarán to try get some counter play going.

Anastasija eventually ground out a win after Mark played a dead-level rook ending too passively, allowing Anastasija to push and promote her h-pawn. But the other three games – on which hinged every single prize bar the bottom grading prize – all went into the final ten minutes. Ciarán nabbed a pawn on b2 (pictured above!), which was a huge blunder, allowing Gerry to concoct a winning attack with bishop and queen – Gerry was club champion and Ciarán dropped out of the prizes altogether. Ross got his queen in close enough to Alex’s king to force a material gain and resignation – securing Ross second place. My own game was last to finish, swinging wildly in time trouble – Mihailo opened his king, I missed a tricky tactic to win a piece (I’d seen the idea, but didn’t have time to find the whole thread) and instead sacced two pieces for a rook and pawn – missing (as did Mihailo) a one-move tactic at the end to win my f-pawn, which would have given me little to play with. Instead, I ran the f-pawn, backed – as is proper – by a rook behind it…and then allowed the rook to get distracted when capturing a checking bishop. I could have just moved my king and kept pushing the pawn, but instead, Mihailo got his rook behind my pawn instead, and even with pawn on f7 and rooks on g7 and h7, there was surprisingly no way to push it home. The game only ended in a draw when – as in Mihailo’s previous draw – we reached a table-base drawn position of R+P v N+P with about four minutes left between us.

This gave the grading prize to Mihailo – much to Odhrán’s annoyance, as he’d waited around in the hope that I’d win and he’d get the grading prize. Zdravko overcame his first-round loss to Stephen to come third and claim a family double. Ross – who had a relatively easy draw, only playing two of the top twelve seeds – claimed an impressive second place and another family double with Desmond taking a grading prize. It’s kind of appropriate given how many family derbies there were in the tournament! Ciarán ended in the always-annoying fourth place despite the best tie-break score of any of the players – his opponents finished first, second, fifth, seventh and 19th!

But Gerry is club champion for what’s at least the fourth time, and with a 100% record, it’s hard to argue with that! A couple of players ran him fairly close (myself included), but we always seemed to have just one fatal blunder in us, while Gerry was efficiency personified.

The tournament overall was a huge success, and the early indications are that 2015’s tournament will be even stronger than this one!

The final standings are below. A * indicates grading prize. Despite a number of upsets, the final ranking – the Beattys, the Healys and Des Carroll aside – actually correlates remarkably closely with seeding!

Pos	Seed	Name	Rating	Score	MBuch	Buch	Prog
1	1	Gerry O’Connell	2088	5	9	14.5	15
2	9	Ross Beatty	1438	4	8	11.5	11
3	2	Zdravko Manojlovic	1896	3.5	7	11	8.5
4	4	Ciaran Ruane	1657	3	10	16	11.5
5	6	Kevin Burke	1551	3	8.5	15	10.5
6	7	Mihailo Manojlovic*	1485	3	8.5	14.5	11
7	5	Alex Byrne	1599	3	8.5	12.5	11.5
8	15	Desmond Beatty*	1120	3	7.5	13	8
9	8	Odhran McDonnell	1456	3	6.5	11.5	8.5
10	10	Dylan Boland	1421	2.5	8	12.5	9
11	11	Eddie Gahan	1410	2.5	7.5	13.5	7
12	12	Stephen Cunningham	1328	2.5	6.5	10	7.5
13	13	Anastasija Manojlovic	1224	2	8	13	6
14	20	Des Carroll	700	2	6.5	9.5	5
15	18	Luke Hayden	994	2	4	7	6
16	3	John Healy	1869	1.5	2.5	5.5	4
17	16	Cal Nolan	1043	1.5	2.5	5.5	3
18	17	Mark Dennehy	1019	1	7.5	11	2
19	14	Ger Healy	1167	1	7	10.5	4
20	19	Paddy Power	796	0.5	4	8	1.5