Irish Championship 1982

A report on the Irish Championship 1982 has been added to the tournaments pages here. 16 of the 99 games are included; there are currently none in the ICU games archive.

The event, sponsored by IBM Ireland, took place (mostly) in the City Hall, Cork, from July 10-18. The field of 23 players included the defending joint champions David Dunne and Philip Short and three time champion Alan Ludgate, along with John Delaney, Colm Barry, and Keith Allen, in a young field.

The fourth seed Colm Barry unexpectedly lost in the first round to Gerry MacElligott and never really recovered, while fifth seed Alan Ludgate saw several half points slip away midway through the event, and also dropped out of contention. The event came down to a struggle between the top three seeds Dunne, Delaney, and Short, with no more than half a point separating any of them at any stage. Heading into the last round, Delaney and Short led with 6½, with Dunne on 6. Dunne won against Gerard O’Connell, while Delaney drew against Ludgate. This left Philip Short needing to win as Black against Keith Allen to finish clear first; a draw would leave him in a three-way tie, and losing out on tie-break.

Allen - Short, Irish Championship 1982

Allen – Short, Irish Championship 1982 (9)
Spectators: John Quigley (controller), David Dunne, David Leech (IBM Ireland)

(via ICU web site)

Philip reached the ending of King and Queen versus King and Rook. Though adjournments were in place for the event, that was only for the first eight rounds: the last round had to be played to a finish in a single session. This was only a few years after Walter Browne’s unexpected struggles with this ending in a 1978 challenge against the BELLE computer (Browne failed to win the first game within 50 moves, and succeeded in the second only on the 50th move (see Müller & Konoval, 2021)). It’s fair to say that the ending is one of trickier ones amongst the endings with so little material.

The game lasted from 10 in the morning until shortly before midnight. It had to be moved from City Hall to a hotel, probably the Imperial Hotel, South Mall, which had been booked for the prizegiving. After 128 moves, then a record for the Irish championship, an exhausted Philip ran into the 50 move rule and the game ended in a draw.

As a result, David Dunne was declared winner under sum of opponent’s scores, and was awarded the trophy and the title of Irish champion.

But wait—the entry form had specified a different method:

Irish Championship 1982 tie break method

Under this method, John Delaney would win. John accordingly appealed, and in early December the Irish Chess Union upheld the appeal and ratified John as champion, for his first title.

Gerry MacElligott, who was playing in his first Irish championship, and who was admitted into the event very late on, had an outstanding tournament and finished clear fourth, for his best ever result. Keith Allen finished clear fifth, followed by a group of five players sharing 6th.

(This championship was an unusually difficult one to reconstruct. No contemporary sources give even the correct final scores, let alone the pairings; for example, the Evening Echo report cited by the ICU tournament page has Gerry MacElligott and Keith Allen tied for 4th-5th; but since those scores added up to 108, if half a point was subtracted from Keith, where did it go? Newspaper reports gave many details, but sometimes listed only leading pairings, and adjournments always present problems. The reconstruction was only possible via Alan Ludgate’s scoresheets, which gave some more details of fixtures and intermediate scores, combined with Gerry MacElligott’s recollections and some detailed discussions with David McAlister; the trove of material provided by John Gibson was very helpful in supplying many details, including the entry form, tie-break rules, and ratings. The missing half-point is accounted for by John Kennedy missing the last round to travel to Scotland for the Glorney Cup which began on July 20, and receiving a half point bye rather than a full bye. Many thanks to all!)

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