Armstrong results

The first round of the Armstrong started last night and for Rathmines it was the traditional A vs. B game. Rathmines A are the defending champions of Lenister, but despite, or perhaps because, this is a local derby, it is always keenly fought. Many players were missing, particularly from the B team.

First Round Results:

Board	Rathmines A			Rathmines B
1	Mel O’Cinneide	1	0	Abul Kalam
2	Daire McMahon	1	0	Michael Kennedy
3	Philip Hogarty	0	1	David Goggins
4	Derek Smith	1	0	John Burns
5	Killian Delaney	0	1	Jack Killane
6	Tony Scannell	½	½	John Crowley (sub)
7	Leon Fagan (sub)	1	0	Pat McEvoy (sub)
8	Philip Doyle (sub)	1	0	Peter Bishop (sub)
Result		5.5	2.5

Mel was playing new member Abul, on board one, and had a winning position when Abul’s flag dropped. David managed to enter an endgame of queen and two pawns against Philip’s rook and five pawns after a storming kingside attack. But the queen was just too powerful to resist and after picking up several pawns in Philip’s time pressure, Philip had no option but to resign. Derek won with a middle-game attack against John’s open king. Killian miscalculated against Jack and was punished promptly.

Tony Scannell (myself) reached this position against John Crowley, after quite a see-saw battle. I had grabbed a pawn early on, but lost the exchange a couple of moves later. However, after John wasted some time picking up some loose king-side pawns, we reached this critical position:

White is winning with the forced sequence Nb7! Ke7; d8Q+ Rxd8; Nxd8 Kxd8; Kd6. Ironically, with white’s b-pawn on b3, black cannot hope to resist white’s incursion on the kingside and have time to capture the pawn too.

Instead, I stumbled with b4? and after …Ke7, black found a remarkable way to draw. (Note that Nb7 is too late now, because of Rxd7). After b5 Rc4!! (this is what I missed); b6 (Kd5 Rxc5+?; Kxc5 Kxd7; Kb6! and white wins, but black is not forced to take the knight) Rxc5+; Kxc5 Kxd7; we reached this tricky position:

In the immediate aftermath, it was felt that white would win with Kd5. But subsequent analysis (with Fritz!) shows that black is close enough to the b pawn to capture it and still get back in time to defend the kingside. He plays …Kc8!; Kd6 Kb7; Ke7 Kxb6; Kxf7 Kc5!; Kxg7 Kd4; Kg6 Ke3 and the pawn falls. In this sequence, if white tries f4 instead of Kg6, then black plays Ke4 and the pawn still falls. This shows the remarkable endgame abilities of a king moving along diagonals. Optically, it looks completely hopeless, but is actually safely drawn.

In the game, I played b7, hoping to pull the black king far from the kingside. But after …Kc7; b8Q+ Kxb8; Kd6 Kc8; Ke7 f5!; Ke6 (Kf7?? loses after g5!) Ke8; Kxf5 it is dead drawn.

Armstrong Rathmines A vs. B

Killian Delaney – captain of the Rathmines Armstrong A team this year – informs me that our first scheduled match is this Thursday, September 27th, 2007, versus the Rathmines B team. The other captain is Michael Kennedy.

We understand that a new rule has been imposed by the league controller, Peter Scott, that this year’s games cannot be suspended. This makes everything very inflexible. We’ll update members about the implications of this rule when we learn more.

For the moment, I do not know the position in regards to the other leagues.

Good luck to both teams!

Club Charity Night

The Club is holding a Fund Raising Night on Tuesday 2nd October.  All people playing at the club rooms that night are asked to donate a minimum of 2 euros to RTE’s People in Need Telethon 07.

That is a minimum please, let’s fill those coffers for a very worthy cause!

European Club Cup

Rathmines took second place in the National Club Championships 2007 and won the right to represent Ireland alongside Kilkenny at the European Club Cup 2007, from October 2nd to October 10th, in Turkey. We plan to run a regular blog direct from Turkey, which we hope will generate much interest from Irish chess players wanting to hear first-hand news from the event.

Official Site at http://euroclub2007.tsf.org.tr/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/lang,en/

Rathmines Team (ranked 53rd from 56 teams):
Bo.      Name                   IRtg  FED
1    Mc Mahon Daire     2222  IRL
2    Stuart Robert        0       IRL
3    Smith Derek          2131   IRL
4    Delaney Killian       2037   IRL
5    Hogarty Philip       1865    IRL
6    McCabe Darren     0         IRL
      Killane Jack          0         IRL
      Whelan Niall         0         IRL

Kilkenny Team:
Ranked 46th

Bo. Name IRtg FED
1 GM Baburin Alexander 2559 IRL
2 IM Quinn Mark 2397 IRL
3 IM Heidenfeld Mark 2349 IRL
4 Griffiths Ryan Rhys 2046 IRL
5 Keogh Eamon 2095 IRL
6 Bradley Sean 0 IRL
  O Dwyer Fergal 1974 IRL

Just to give an indication of how strong this event is going to be, look no further than the top seeds:

Baden-Baden, average rating, 2713
Anand Viswanathan 2792
Bacrot Etienne 2695
Carlsen Magnus 2710
Harikrishna P 2664
Nielsen Peter Heine 2637
Nisipeanu Liviu-Dieter 2683
Schlosser Philipp 2562
Svidler Peter 2735

Gulp!

Rathmines Battle

Peter Cafolla, Rathmines CC, has amusingly annotated a game of his against another Rathmines player, Philip Hogarty, from the recent City of Dublin tournament.

http://www.icu.ie/games/display.php?id=28701&align=left