We are nearly there! The Champion of Champions tournament, the signature tournament to mark our 50 th anniversary, starts at the Rochestown Lodge Hotel next Thursday. The first round will be at 7pm and the opening ceremony will take place shortly beforehand from about 6.30 pm. All our welcome to attend this ceremony. There will be two rounds each day on the following 3 days at 10am and 3.30pm each day and the tournament will conclude on Sunday evening.
The tournament promises a feast of high class chess over the next weekend. The 8 participants, 1 grandmaster, 3 international masters and 4 fide masters, have either won or shared the Irish champion title 20 times between them. They are all icons of Irish chess and there should be tremendous competition between them for the substantial prizes on offer and for the trophy, generously donated by our friends in the Eblana Club, which goes to the winner, the Champion of Champions.
The tournament is open to the public. It may also be viewed on live boards. There will also be commentary by three extremely strong players- Jonathan O’Connor who narrowly missed out on winning the Irish championship in 2023, IM Martin Quinn and Stephen Jessel, who won the Irish championship in 2016 with a record score for modern times of 8.5 points from 9 games.
The links to the live boards and commentaries are as follows:
We would like to thank all members to the club who gave us great support in organising this tournament. This support included generous financial donations (still welcome even at this late hour) and other gestures of encouragement, positivity etc. which were also very important.
