Irish Championship 1991

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Sources and notes

Sources
Entry form Side 1 and side 2
(via John Gibson)
ICU web site
CHESS IRELAND The archive at John Hurley's CHESS IRELAND site contains a database ("Database of Irish games (mainly 1990s)") (via the Wayback Machine) that contains 51 games listed as being from this event (some duplicated; one (McMahon - Heidenfeld, round 8) given in two versions; one (Brady - Heidenfeld, round 4) given for this event and also for the Telecom Éireann International); and one, O'Connell - Delaney, for which only the event year is listed (no event name, site, or round number), that is not given in the ICU games archive (as of the date of v1.0 of this report).

This last game matches the result of the round 4 game between these players, and also, if it is from this event, it appears in the right place in a sequence of O'Connell's five games as White from the event.
Big Database 2017 ChessBase's Big Database 2017 has 51 games from this event (missing O'Connell - Delaney, round 4), but 4 do not match the versions shown in the ICU games archive (as of the date of v1.0 of this report). For these 4 games, the version in Big Database 2017 is a truncated version of the one in the ICU archive. See Notes → Discrepancies below.
Magazines
  • Irish Chess Journal, vol. 3, no. 5, October 1991, pp. 8-19 (50 games)
  • —, vol. 3, no. 6, December 1991, pp. 8-11 (tournament report by Gerard McDonnell)
  • (neither article available for this report)
Newspapers
  • Cork Examiner: (Jim Olney)
  • "Chess champions knocked out", July 15, 1991 p. 15 (rounds 1 and 2, blitz and active subsidiary events)
  • "Brady clear leader", July 16, 1991 p. 20 (round 3)
  • "First defeat for Brady", July 17, 1991 p. 21 (round 3 adjourned games, round 4)
  • "Brady claims title", July 22, 1991 p. 23 (rounds 8 and 9, final totals, results of intermediate and junior championships)
  •  
  • Evening Echo: (Jim Olney)
  • "Cork players kings of castle at Limerick", July 30, 1991 p. 18 (scores of J. McDonnell - Brady, round 1, and Delaney - Brady, round 5; summary results of subsidiary events; photo of Mel Ó Cinnéide)
  •  
  • Irish Times: (J.J. Walsh)
  • "Holder defends chess title", July 11, 1991 p. 10 (preview)
  • "Chess opening surprises", July 15, 1991 p. 2 (rounds 1 and 2)
  • "Chess leadership shared", July 18, 1991 p. 2 (round 5)
  • "Brady leads chess tournament", July 19, 1991 p. 2 (round 6)
  • "Brady is Irish chess champion", July 22, 1991 p. 3 (rounds 8 and 9, leading scores)
  • "Chess results, July 24, 1991 p. 4 (leading scores in Wid-West Open Weekend Tournament)
  •  
  • Limerick Leader:
  • "Limerick on parade", July 13, 1991 p. 6 (start of event, venue)
  • "We lead on chess", July 15, 1991 p. 2 (round 2, scores, first prize)
  • "Shhh as Limerick hosts chess championships", July 17, 1991 p. 8 (feature article, interviews with organiser and various players, photos of Frank Noonan and Pat McMahon)
  • "Limerick: nothing to shout about", July 24, 1991 p. 4 (final results, prizes)


Notes
Key In "Pairings & results",
  • "age" denotes the player's age on his or her birthday that year (even if the birthday fell after the event)
  • "x-ch" denotes former Irish champions
  • "ch#" denotes the number of championships the player played in, including this one
  • "ol" denotes a member of the Irish team at the previous Olympiad (Novi Sad 1990)
Grading prize The £30 grading prize for best performance from a player rated below 2000 was shared by Pat McMahon and Niall McDonnell
Débuts and final appearances 5 players played in their first Irish Championship: Heidenfeld, Joe McDonnell, Niall McDonnell, McMahon, and Noonan. Of these, Niall McDonnell and Noonan never played again, along with Gerard McDonnell and Kevin McHugh.
Tie break The instructions from the ICU to controllers and arbiters for 1994 (provided by Herbert Scarry) specify that two tied players would share title, and that for a tie between three or more, the ICU 1990 rules would apply to produce a single champion. These rules, in relevant part, were:
  • "i. Buchholz Score: the sum of the final scores of the player's opponents;
  • ii. Median Buchholz score: the sum of the final score of the player's opponents, excluding the highest and the lowest of these;
  • iii. the individual results between the tied players, but only if they have both or all played each other;
  • iv. the sum of opponent's ratings, excluding the lowest of these. If still tied, eliminate the rating of the next lowest rated opponent(s) until a decision is possible.
  • In the determination of the Buchholz scores (a) and (b) above, each player's score is adjusted where applicable as follows: 1/2 point is awarded for each unplayed player game whether this is because of a bye, forfeit, or unplayed round because of the withdrawal of a participant. A player awarded a bye counts the bye as an opponent who has drawn his game in every round."
(cf. ICU Tournament Regulations, ICU web site, April 2010 [apparently unchanged since 1990] (via the Wayback Machine)
Nationalities Mark Heidenfeld appeared in FIDE lists as GER until July 1996; his first list as IRL was January 1997
Discrepancies
  • There were four games that had discrepancies between the ICU games archive / CHESS IRELAND versions and the Big Database 2017 versions:
  • N. McDonnell - J. McDonnell, round 5: Big Database 2017 truncated after 36B
  • Delaney - Noonan, round 7: Big Database 2017 truncated after 8B
  • J. McDonnell - McHugh, round 7: Big Database 2017 truncated after 55W
  • N. McDonnell - G. McDonnell, round 7: Big Database 2017 truncated after 54W
  •  
  • For N. McDonnell - G. McDonnell, round 7, the ICJ report gave a version that ended with 69... g2 0-1, matching the ICU games archive / CHESS IRELAND version. The Big Database 2017 version of Delaney - Noonan is implausibe.
Anomalies
  • J. McDonnell - McHugh, round 7, has a final position in which Black is winning (in both the ICU games archive / CHESS IRELAND version and the Big Database 2017 version), but the result is 1-0. Kevin McHugh (via email) says he did not lose on time, and the colour sequence is right for both players. What happened?
  • N. McDonnell - G. McDonnell, round 7, has a final position in which White has an obvious perpetual check, via 70. Qg3+, but the result is 0-1. What happened?
FMs John Delaney and Philip Short received their FIDE Master certificates at the closing ceremony
Ratings
  • FIDE ratings are from the January 1991 list, which seems to have been the most recently issued one when the event started
Versions
  • v1.0 (29 Jun 2020): First published version
  • v1.1 (5 Jan 2021): Corrected link to January 1991 FIDE rating list in Sources and notes → Notes → Ratings (link previously pointed to January 1978 list); added champion's name in Pairings & results; modified description of games from ICU archive in Sources and Notes → Sources → ICU web site; changed "Débuts" entry in Sources and notes → Notes to add final appearances; changed dead links to versions from the Wayback Machine; modified URLs to change to https versions where possible
  • v1.2 (6 July 2021): added initials for the McDonnell brothers in round reports, openings index, and annotations index; added ages for McHugh, McDonnell, and Noonan, based on ICU Players page data; added nationalities column in Pairings & results, and note on Heidenfeld's nationality in Sources and notes → Notes; modified Tie break entry in Information → Basic data and added Tie break entry in Sources and notes → Notes; added 11 games to Annotations index (which previously had only N. McDonnell - G. McDonnell, round 7); added reference to N. McDonnell - G. McDonnell, round 7, and corrected typos; modified format to show direct link to "Sources and notes" page from every page, rather than having to go via Information → Basic data
Contributors Seán Coffey, John Gibson, Kevin McHugh


IRLchess: Irish chess history & records.
Version 1.2, published 6 July 2021. Comments/corrections? .
Download pgn file.