TOM O’GORMAN SECURES SECOND IM NORM!

Tom O’Gorman has secured his second International Chess Master (IM) norm by winning a very strong tournament recently in Sheffield. He now needs only one more norm to become an IM. The IM title is a rare and coveted one. Less than 4,000 players worldwide are IMs, about 1% of all chess players who play chess competitively and who are registered with FIDE, the international body which runs the sport. Tom, a product of our youth programme, was always extremely talented at chess. Just turned 21 last December, he was one of the youngest winners of the Irish Chess Championship in 2020. He was a member of the Irish team which participated in the Chess Olympiad in Chennai (India) in 2022 and we hope that he will again be part of the Irish team at the forthcoming Chess Olympiad in Budapest later this year. He has played on top board for Oxford on four occasions in their annual match against Cambridge and has won each time. This is a record; nobody else ever achieved this feat on top board since the Oxford-Cambridge chess matches started in 1873. The club is very proud of Tom’s achievements and there will be great celebrations when he gains his third norm and becomes an IM and only the twelfth player in the history of Irish chess to do so.