Galway Chess Club’s team came second equal in the National Club Championships in Dublin at the weekend, with Gonzaga, but just lost second place on tie-break (game points) by half a point.  A full report will appear shortly.

Galway Chess Club Annual General Meeting will take place on Thursday 9 May, at the Bridge Centre, starting at 8 p.m.  Everybody is welcome, although only paid-up members may vote.  Motions for consideration, and nominations for Officers, should be sent to our email address, galwaychess at gmail dot com [reassemble], by 2 May.

The 2013 Winter League Champion is Joona Kiiski.  Joona tied for first with Pete Morriss, on 5½ points out of 7.  In the play-off match between the two, the first round of games, at a rate of 25 minutes each plus a 5 second increment, saw Pete win the first game (with white) and then […]

St. Patrick’s De La Salle school, Castelbar, represented Connaught in the under-14 section of the All-Ireland Schools and Colleges Chess Final last weekend, and came second, only very narrowly missing first place. St. Patrick’s beat the second Leinster school (Munster did not put forward a team to represent them), Clongeal (of Dublin) 5-1; and then the Ulster champions […]

This year’s Winter League has produced a tie for first place – the third time this has happened in the tournament’s eleven year history.  As specified in the rules, the two joint winners, Joona Kiiski and Pete Morriss, will play off for the title next Thursday (18 April).  Spectators are welcome. Third place also produced a […]

Only two Galway players went up to Dublin at Easter for the Dublin International, but one of them, Kevin Fitzpatrick left with the grading prize in the Challengers event (under 2000 FIDE).  Kevin was the lowest rated player in that section, but held his own consistently.  This was a very fine achievement. Unfortunately, our other entrant, […]

The March blitz was contested by some of this season’s regular attenders – possibly because the appalling weather dissuaded others from turning out.  Joint winners were Felix Calleja and Pete Morriss on 6/7; third was Jason Rawlinson on 4½.  The grading prize winner was Conall Hegarty, on 3½.

A number of Galway players travelled down to play in the Bunratty Congress (Ireland’s largest and strongest weekend tournament) last weekend, and in general we put up a good account of ourselves. In the top section (the Masters) Oissine Murphy scored 2½ points out of 6 – a very good result, since all Oissine’s opponents […]

We have just been informed that Nigel Short – who played Garry Kasparov for the World Championship just 20 years ago in 1993 – will be giving a lecture and playing all-comers simultaneously, in Ennis on Tuesday (5 March) evening.  Short did the same last year, and we all found the lecture very stimulating – […]

The February blitz was won by Brendan Buckley with a clear 7 wins out of 7 games – an excellent and rare performance.  Some of the games were quite close, but Brendan always managed to hang on at the end – the sign of a true champion,  Second was Jason Rawlinson, with 5 points, and […]