IRLchess

Some items this month that weren’t the subject of separate posts:

Games archive: The ICU games archive is an excellent resource and represents a huge amount of effort by its originators (John Hurley and Mark Orr deserve much of the credit, I believe). But it seems there is no particular effort being made to keep it up to date. I’d like to aim at making the IRLchess archive the most comprehensive and current resource for Irish games.

With this in mind, I’ve steadily been adding games to the archive on these pages, all searchable via the “Search Games” feature in the right column. After some reworking of the routines this month, the process is now much simpler, so whenever a new game appears on a club web page or blog, it’s relatively straightforward to grab it and convert to a playable .htm file. I’m leaving out comments (too tricky to handle, apart from any issues of getting permission) but am adding sources, references and links where available.

Games added this month include:

Sheehan-Gibson, “Dublin league” 1997
Dooley-Dunne, Branagan Cup 1997
K. Delaney-R. Quinn, National Club Ch 2009
O’Brien-O’Donnell, Munster League 2011-12
Noonan-O’Grady, Shannon Masters 2011-12
Masterson-Waters, Ballynafeigh June Rapid 2012
Wall-Curtin, UT San Antonio Open 1992

plus half a dozen more.

You may notice that the search takes a few seconds (10-20) to generate results. In one sense this isn’t ideal, of course, but there’s a reason: each search causes each and every .htm file on the site to be opened and checked to see if it matches the search terms. So search results are always automatically up to date: as soon as a new .htm file is loaded, it appears in the search results. For future development: a speedier search, and a speedy way of generating an up-to-date pgn file of all the games on the site (to this end, the pgn source is embedded into the .htm file, as you’ll see if you do a ‘View Source’ on the files above).

Simuls: A couple of new events have been added to the Local Simuls page: these were simuls given by Alexander Baburin in 2005 and 2006. In addition, Ciarán Quinn and Philip Reilly sent in comments on simuls given by Bronstein, Spassky, and Geller. For Bronstein, I’m happy to say there is plenty of information: David McAlister sent a scan of the report in the ICJ, complete with several games, so it’s just a matter of getting around to processing it. For Spassky and Geller, though, any help would be greatly appreciated. I think Geller also played a game against three opponents in consultation? (David Dunne, Jonathan O’Connor, Paul Delaney?). I recall seeing a photo in the Dublin C.C. rooms.

It has been quiet here lately because I’ve been spending my chess time budget on two new features:

Search Posts and Search Games: The inbuilt WordPress search feature is very limited, searching only posts and not pages. Since all the tournament reports and playable games are on ‘pages’ (fixed background content) this meant that none of this information was searchable.

Until now, that is: now there are Search Pages and Search Games functions in the right column, and the same ‘Search Games’ feature is on the Games page. Access is by entering search terms directly rather than via a form where you could search separately by White name, or ECO code, or Event, say, but I think it should be fine this way.

Currently 2,719 games are indexed, including all the TWIC games, most but not all tournament report games, and some extra e2e4 games (see below). The tournament reports need to be re-run to add the required indexing lines and this isn’t quite complete yet. The 2,719 total above includes playable games, games with results but no moves, and walkovers & byes.

Extra e2e4 games: Last October’s e2e4 Gatwick International had a significant Irish contingent. The games would normally have shown up promptly in TWIC, but in this case they were held back to help the chances of several young competitors who were heading off to Brazil for the World Youth Championships. (See David McAlister’s comment here, pointing to a discussion on the English Chess Forum.)

But with TWIC, it seems that only this week’s tournaments are covered, so once a tournament’s natural place has been missed, it never reappears. Whether or not that’s true in general, these games never appeared in later TWICs. However they did eventually appear on e2e4’s website, and are now included here. (Search for “Gatwick 2011.10” in the Search Games feature: 60 games, including 3 byes and 9 games from the Major.)

TWIC also seems to exclude sections other than the top one, i.e., the various Challengers, Majors, etc., but again these are usually available on e2e4’s site. A partial selection has been included here, with games from the Sunningdale Major (May 2011), Sunningdale Challengers G (August 2011), and the Brighton Major International B (February 2012), in addition to the Gatwick International Major above: total 85 extra e2e4 games.

Elaine Pritchard: Elaine Pritchard, who played in Castlebar 1969, along with her husband David, died earlier this year, on her 86th birthday. BCM had an on-line obituary. The Castlebar 1969 pages have been updated accordingly.

More simuls: Early December 1926: is there any epoch that is a less likely candidate for chess activity in Ireland, outside of Dublin or Belfast? But it turns out there were some significant events: E.A. Znosko-Borovsky gave three simuls in Armagh and Limerick, as part of an extensive tour in which he gave many simuls in England:

1926.12.03, Armagh (Armagh C.C.). +20 =0 -2.
1926.12.07, (Consultation), Limerick (Limerick C.C.). +3 =0 -0.
1926.12.08, Limerick (Limerick C.C.). +14 =1 -0.