TOM O’GORMAN WINS RAPID PLAY!

Our Tom O’Gorman was a convincing winner of our Rapid Play tournament played last Sunday. His performance rating was 2737!

It was our twelfth Rapid Play event and it continued its great popularity among chess players. The number of entries was oversubscribed and we had to confine it to 42. Of these, there were two Irish champions (Colm Daly, who has held the title six times and Tom who won it in 2020) and 15 entries over 1,800 rating. We even had an entrant who had travelled from Mullingar!

Tom played excellent chess throughout and won all his six games. In the last round he had a tense and exciting game as Black against Colm Daly who was just half a point behind him and would take the title if he won. Tom attacked throughout the game but Colm defended in his usual tenacious way. It eventually came down to a situation where Tom had a Queen and a couple of pawns against three pieces with the four Rooks and other pawns still on the board. In this sort of situation the three pieces can be dangerous but Tom kept the initiative and never allowed them to get fully into play. He exchanged one of the Rooks and then traded his Queen for a Rook and Bishop to reach an ending with Rook against two pieces but where his extra pawns were unstoppable. It was a very calm and measured performance against a very tough opponent in a tense final round situation.

Second prize was shared jointly between Matteo Sunder, a visiting Italian player, and Adam Collins. Finn Cummins won the grading prize for players over 1,600. We had another success where our own Brian Dunnion won the grading prize for players over 1,400. Well done Brian!

The tournament was impeccably controlled by Ivan Baburin and extremely well organised by our Richard Daly who put a huge amount of work in making the event the success it was.

Tom now moves on to giving an eagerly anticipated simultaneous against club members this week and then plays in the Chess Olympiad in Budapest, which starts on 10 September, as a member of the Irish men’s team. We wish him and his sister Alice (who is playing on the women’s team) every success and we are confident that both of them will perform very well.