Congratulations to the joint Irish champions for this year, FMs Stephen Brady and Colm Daly, after one of the closest finishes ever.
A fuller report later, but for now we should acknowledge that first place was shared by, and indeed would have been won on tie-break by, Juri Firstov (Estonia), who isn’t eligible for the title of champion as he’s not an Irish native or citizen. (It would have been interesting if he had produced an Irish passport at the closing ceremony!)
This reminds me that the posts here last December on players who finished equal first in an Irish championship but were never Irish champion omitted several players who fall into this same category:
Gawain Jones
Mark Hebden
Nick Pert
Alon Greenfeld
(respectively joint first in 2004, 2007, 2007, and 2008),
to which we can now add
Juri Firstov.
I’m not fully sure if this is a complete list as there are murky issues around very early championships (1880’s), where it is not easy to work out what the rules were. Mind you, given how hard it is to find out the current rules, we’re fortunate as much is known about the early championships as there is–see the LCU Blog for the amazing level of confusion on what the rules are this very minute. There’s possibly one extra player on this list, but leaving that aside the list with this year’s addition is:
William Edward Thrift
P.J. McMahon
W.J. Allen
Oscar Aidan Quigley
William Richard Dunphy
Alex Montwill
Matt O’Leary
Tom Clarke
Gawain Jones
Mark Hebden
Nick Pert
Alon Greenfeld
Juri Firstov.
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