It isn’t often that Irish chess history makes the front page of the Irish Times, but we live in strange times indeed: today’s paper has a story, by Joanne Hunt, Game finally over after 50 years for silver chess trophy.
It seems that the Irish Times Game of the Year Trophy had been dropped into Weirs on Grafton Street for engraving, in 1962, and never picked up. The last winner was Vincent Maher, Irish champion in 1950 and 1955, whom the paper tracked down to Stockport, England, where he’s a retired GP. According to the story, he’s still playing chess, though not competitively.
The ICU archive has many games of his, but none from 1962. J.J. Walsh’s manuscript has several more, but again none from 1962. Does anyone have the winning game, or any others from that Irish Times series?