We have made the decision to push the dates of The 99th Irish Championship 2020 back to the August Bank Holiday in the hope that there will be more clarity in relation to Covid-19 social distancing restrictions by the time we make the ultimate decision as to whether we can safely run over the board chess events. While this is only a few extra weeks, this does allow us the time to carefully consider our options and another month to decide how we will proceed. The August Bank Holiday was not previously an option but since the Olympiad has been moved from those dates to 2021 and the Glorney looks set to move to later in August, it is now possible and suits our host.

Like all of you, we will follow news updates related to the spread of this virus and make a decision on the viability of the new dates in early June. At that time, if it is clear that the event cannot go ahead before the end of summer - we will be left with two options: moving the dates to December or cancelling the 2020 event.