Author Archives: Sean Coffey

Waterford 2012

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Sean Coffey

Rory Quinn won last year’s Waterford Open in style, with 6/6, retaining his title from the year before. I asked him for his games for the archive, and he very kindly sent them. Alas! I ran into all sorts of … Continue reading →

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The New Winawer Report

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Sean Coffey

How do junior players today build an opening repertoire? Do coaches play a role in advising on a balanced set of openings? How much comes from the now-ubiquitous repertoire books? I have the sense that it’s much more structured than … Continue reading →

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Joe Ryan misses IM norm by ½ point

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Sean Coffey

I haven’t seen any mention of this on the ICU site, but if I’m reading the requirements correctly Joe Ryan missed an IM norm by the narrowest of margins last month. The event was the 4th Sant Martí IM tournament … Continue reading →

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‘Fighting like Kilkenny cats’

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Sean Coffey

An Irish game had the distinction of featuring as one of the ChessBase puzzles this week, with fanciful title to match: the reader had to determine the consequences of 27. … Bxg2 in the diagrammed position. See Oliver Reeh’s article … Continue reading →

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Rook v. Three Pawns (part II)

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Sean Coffey

Continuing the discussion of this ending from part I: I thought this ending must be extremely rare in practice. But to my surprise Mason-Paulsen turns out to be only the first of many examples in Irish chess, i.e., where the … Continue reading →

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Rook v. Three Pawns (part I)

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Sean Coffey

The following is very slightly adapted from an article I submitted to the ICJ some time back. Unfortunately the ICJ seems to have fallen dormant, with the last issue having appeared a year ago this month. I’m still hoping we’ll … Continue reading →

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Monthly updates, October and November

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Sean Coffey

Another update on the items over the past couple of months that weren’t the subject of separate posts: “Search games”: The search function for games in the IRLchess games archive has been rewritten. It’s now much faster–almost instantaneous, I think–instead … Continue reading →

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World Youth Championships, Maribor, Slovakia

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Sean Coffey

A group of seven Irish players participated in the World Youth Championships in Maribor earlier this month. A full trip report is available over on the ICU site. The organisers did a great job in transcribing 8,000+ game scores and … Continue reading →

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World Senior Championship

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Sean Coffey

The 22nd World Senior Championships are currently in progress in Kamena Vourla, Greece. Ireland is represented by Pete Morriss of Galway, who is having an excellent tournament so far. He’s currently on 5/8, with a tournament performance of 2236, about … Continue reading →

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A missed opportunity: Arkell-Allen, Blackpool 2012

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Sean Coffey

From the first round of this year’s Blackpool Open in March, here’s a near-miss by Keith Allen, playing Black against GM Keith Arkell. White has been over-pressing to squeeze something out of a level position, and has now fallen into … Continue reading →

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