This years Bunratty Chess Festival was held in a different hotel, the Bunratty Castle, which proved to be a very popular change. This new venue was a great success and, as with most events these days, the overall number of players was down on recent years but no disastrously so.
A total of 246 players battled for the 4 titles at stake, the minor having almost 100 players alone. The major and challengers has just over 60 each while the masters was the event that suffered the most from absentees only 26 players participated in the top event. There were 2 main factors for this, the unavoidable clash with the 4NCL weekend and a number of last minute cancellations from the titled players that were due to play. These included Kevin Spraggett GM, Luis Galego GM, Sam Collins IM, Mark Quinn IM and Mark Heidenfeld IM. This was most unfortunate but could not be helped.
There were a few upsets in the first round of the masters, Alex Lopez FM, our third seed, lost to Zaidan Zulkipli while one of our Dutch visitors, Arno Eliens defeated David Fitzsimons. Cork junior, Hugh Doyle won his first round encounter with Eamon Keogh while Liam Porter was certainly on his way to causing yet another first round upset in his game against Frans Wolfernik but let the win slip on move 27 (game).
In round 2, our second seed, Adam Hunt IM from England had a game on his hands against Rory Quinn from Ennis. Rory missed his chance to force a draw with a nice combination on move 17 (game).
In the meantime, Alex Baburin moved to 3 out of 3 with a win against Philip Short (game). Round 3 also saw Adam Hunt held to a draw by Ryan Rhys Griffiths.
In round 4 it was Adam Hunts (pictured right) turn to face Alex Baburin and they shared the point (game) leaving Alex leading on 3½ out of 4, the chasing pack of 5 players included Kieran Monihan, Philip Short, David Fitzsimons, Adam Hunt, Alex Lopez and Ryan Rhys Griffiths, all on 3.
In 1995 Alex Baburin won the Bunratty Masters on tie break from Jonathan Speelman and Kieran Moynihan. Kieran is back playing chess these days, after a good number of years of semi-retirement from the game and he had his chance to try to get one over on our resident Grandmaster, however, it was not to be (game).
It was left to Alex Lopez in the final round to see if he could stop our sole grandmaster from winning the Bunratty Masters for his second time and he certainly gave it a go (game).
At the prize giving, in his acceptance speech, Alex explained the difference between a super GM and an ordinary GM; it took Peter Svidler 2 years to win the Bunratty Masters twice, it took Alex 15 years to do it!
Prize Winners
Before I list the prizes, I should explain that we are using a new pairing system to handle the events Swiss Sys. A human error was made when analysing the Masters Section while distributing the prizes - the tie-breaking system was not loaded and the software ordered tied players in rating order instead of the usual, by tie-breaking score. This mistake was only noticed and corrected when analysing the Minor section. This mistake only affected the Masters, the other sections were displayed correctly. As you can imagine the timescale for the prize giving process is very tight and during the pressure we omitted to recheck the Masters Section and only noticed the error well after all the players had gone home. All we can do is apologise to the injured parties, David Fitzsimons and Tony Aherne and we will, of course, sent them on the prize they should have won.
Masters
1st Alex Baburin GM 5½; 2nd= Adam Hunt, Ryan Rhys Griffiths 4½. Best untitled Irish player: David Fitzsimons (pictured left; prize given to Alex Lopez in error). Grading Prize: Tony Aherne (awarded to Ziadan Zulkipli in error).
Challengers
1st Semyon Mkrtchyan 5½ (pictured right); 2nd= Gerard Mac Elligott, John Courtney 5. Grading Section 1: Paul Kiely 4½, Grading Section 2: Jamie Flynn 4.
Major
1st Killian Long 5½; 2nd= Ashley Campion, Sean Cullen 5. Grading Section 1: Ciaran Ruane 4½, Grading Section 2: Turlock Kelly 4, Grading Section 3: Mark Watkins 4.
Minor
1st Mark Monahan 6; 2nd Andrew Staunton 5½, 3rd= Eamonn Canning, Aidan O Sullivan, Pat O Brien, Liam Murphy, Tim Dineen. Grading Section 1: Ivan Baburin, 4½, Grading Section 2: Clare McCarrick, 4.
The following were the best placed non-rated players: Andrew Marsh, Alan Delahunty, Kevin Singpurwala, Thomas Dunne, Ferdia Fagan,
And last, but not least, there was a special donation made to the event to be given to the rated player whose rating performance was highest over his rating. This price went to Thomas Keating.
At the closing ceremony, the Chairman of the Irish Chess Union, Eamon Keogh, made a very special presentation to Jack Lowry, inducting him into the Irish Chess Union's Hall of Fame to huge applause.
Bunratty 2011 dates have been set for 25th 26th and 27th February and they do not clash with the 4NCL!