IRLchess

This week’s issue of TWIC contains just three Irish games. It did not contain any games from last week’s e2e4 Gatwick International; the FIDE tournament reports don’t give the games either, and they’ve even disappeared from the organiser’s web site. I’m still hoping they’ll reappear: sometimes it’s a matter of the last-round games not being quite finished.

In any case this week’s games, now up on the Games page, include one by Sarah Hegarty and two by Joe Ryan. Of these the most interesting is Ryan-Cruz. There was a discussion a while back on the LCU Blog on the merits or otherwise of 1. b3. Based on much personal experience I think this is correctly written 1. b3?, and this game, in which Joe Ryan tries it against a 2400+ opponent, is a searing example.

Essentially all readers are familiar with The Week in Chess. (For those who are not: it’s a weekly report on tournaments worldwide in the previous week, usually with several thousand games; one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern Chess World and indispensable for the tournament player.) But (I will guess) most are not familiar with a small format change that occurred about a year ago, starting with TWIC 829: for the first time, all games included the FIDE IDs of each player.

With this change, it is much easier to filter for games by Irish players, since FIDE rating lists with FIDE ID and nationality are available on-line. You might think that it should be easy to compare player names to FIDE or ICU (or UCU) lists. Not so! In practice the same name is often given in several different forms in different lists, and even from year to year in the same list, so the same player will appear as Joe Ryan (FM), J. Ryan, Jo. Ryan, Joseph Ryan, or Joseph D. Ryan, say. In some cases two (or more) players have the same name: the “A. Smith” problem. And so on. All quite messy, and all solved by adding FIDE IDs.

On the (new) Games page, I’ve added the results of filtering all TWICs that include these IDs, i.e., issue numbers 829 to 884, 27^th September 2010 to this week. Any game in which either player is Irish is included, and also any game played in Ireland is included: the tournaments covered were Bunratty, Kilkenny, the Irish championship, and the City of Dublin IM. 835 games in all, with 67 Irish players featured. The players, with number of games for each, are:

Allen, Keith: 6
Astaneh Lopez, Alex: 20
Baburin, Alexander: 13
Benson, Nicola: 9
Benson, Oisín P.: 8
Brady, Stephen: 18
Breen, Anthony: 65
Byrne, Ray: 6
Cafolla, Peter: 27
Cassidy, John: 4
Collins, Sam: 74
Courtney, John: 14
Crichton, Martin: 9
Daly, Colm: 27
Daly, Patrick: 2
Delaney, John: 9
Doyle, Hugh: 15
Duffy, Séamus: 6
Egan, Colm: 2
Fitzsimons, David: 26
Fox, Anthony: 29
Freeman, Gordon: 26
Griffiths, Ryan-Rhys: 43
Hayes, Peter J.: 5
Healy, Tom: 4
Hearne, Sarah-Jane: 9
Hegarty, Sarah N.: 76
Heidenfeld, Mark: 15
Keogh, Eamon: 9
King, Melvyn: 9
Larter, Nick J.: 6
Loughran, John: 9
Lynch, Peter J.: 2
Magee, Rónán: 17
McCabe, Darren: 8
McGovern, Mark E.: 4
McMahon, Daire: 9
McMaster, Richard: 6
McMorrow, John: 5
Meskens, Stephan: 6
Mirza, Diana: 9
Mirza, Gabriel: 3
Moran, Stephen: 9
Moynihan, Kieran: 6
Murray, David: 16
Murray, Jim G.: 2
Nicholson, John: 6
O’Connell, Gerard: 9
O’Connor, Jonathan: 12
O’Driscoll, Kieran: 10
O’Leary, Matt: 11
O’Rourke, Ray: 9
Orr, Mark J. L.: 1
Osborne, Sam: 5
Porter, Liam: 6
Quinn, Mark: 1
Quinn, Rory: 14
Redmond, John P.: 16
Reynolds, Pat: 9
Ryan, Joe: 28
Shaughnessy, Elizabeth: 8
Short, Philip: 15
Smith, Andrew Philip: 8
Twomey, Pat: 8
Wall, Gavin: 21
Wallace, Paul: 18
Welsh, Michael: 9

Of course there’s some overlap with the ICU games archive, but I count 264 games there in the same time period so most of the games here are not on the ICU site.

All in pgn format for the moment; at some point the games will be run through the same processor as is used for the tournament reports. Also we’ll be updating the list week by week.

Blunders: the bane of every chessplayer. There is almost nothing that can cure the sting, except perhaps for Time, the Great Healer, to work its soothing magic.

Sometimes a small amount of solace can be derived from seeing the same mistake made by a better player, sometimes even–in the ideal case–by a reigning World Champion.

In the 2000 Irish championship in Castleconnell, Co. Limerick, the tournament had hardly begun when disaster befell Eamon Keogh:

Gavin Wall — Eamon Keogh
Irish Championship (1), Castleconnell 2000

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. c3 Qa5 5. dxc5 Qxc5 6. Nf3 Bd7 7. Bd3 (diagram)

And now the blunder: 7. … Bb5?? 8. Be3!

1-0.

After 8. … Qc6 9. Nd4 Black loses a piece. There’s not much to say about that, except to point out the following:

Vladimir Liberzon – Tigran Petrosian
Championship of the Professional Unions, Moscow 1964

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e5 c5 5. a3 Bxc3+ 6. bxc3 Ne7 7. Qg4 Ng6 8. h4 h5 9. Qg3 Qa5 10. Bd2 Nc6 11. Bd3 Nce7 12. dxc5 Qxc5 13. Nf3 Bd7 14. 0-0 (diagram)

14. … Bb5?? 15.Be3 1-0.

[Click to replay both games.]

 
There’s a slight puzzle here. With … d4 followed by … Qd5, Black doesn’t have to lose a piece in either case. Instead he’d be a pawn down with a bad position to boot, and would still be lost. Did Petrosian see this possibility? Sources differ: John Moles, in his The French Defence Main Line Winawer (Batsford 1975), p. 104, says no: “1-0?? … Petrosian thought that he would lose a piece after 15…. Qc6?? 16. Nd4 overlooking that he could have got away with the loss of a pawn after 15. … d4! 16. c/B xd4 Qd5!” On the other hand, Tim Krabbé, in his column “A Guided Tour of Chess” at ChessCafe.com, September 2000, says, or rather implies, yes: “Black resigned. Against a lesser opponent, that would have been early. After 15. … d4 16. cxd4 White ‘has the pawn and the compensation’, as Roman Dzindzichashvili used to say, but Black could struggle. Surprisingly he could even have struggled after 15…. Qc6; 16. Nd4 Bxd3 17. Nxc6 Nf5 18. Qg5 Bxf1 19. Nd4 Nxd4 20. cxd4 Ba6 and White still has some work to do. Understandably, Petrosian did not fancy being subjected to that kind of work, and was probably too disgusted anyway.” Taylor Kingston says no, in a bulletin board post at ChessKB.com (14th August 2010): “Petrosian thought he was losing a piece here (15. … Qc6? 16. Nd4), but in fact he need lose only a pawn (15. … d4!).”

Is there any evidence on whether Petrosian did or did not see this? And did Eamon Keogh see it?