Rounds 10 and 11: Alex’s GM bid had petered out by this stage as the team didn’t face opposition of high enough rating. The reason for the teams decline in form seems to be food poisoning so there isn’t much point commenting on these rounds. Round 9: Ireland 0.5 – 3.5 Turkmenistan: http://www.chessolympiadistanbul.com/livegames/games.php?section=0&round=9&match=36 Round […]

In one of his unfortunately rare forays into competitive chess, Galway’s Brendan Buckley came fourth in the strong Dun Laoghaire Rapid last weekend, including a win against top seed (and eventual winner) Karl McPhillips.  Full results and cross-table, and a brief report, are available on the ICU web-site, at http://www.icu.ie/articles/display.php?id=354.  An excellent result by Brendan.

John and Ruth Cormican will be representing Ireland in the European Youth Chess Championships, in Prague from 16 to 26 August, 2012.  John is playing in the under-16, and Ruth in the girls under-18 (along with several others who are also representing Ireland in these events and in other age groups). The web-site is http://www.eycc2012.eu/.

We will be meeting in the Cottage Bar, Lower Salthill, on Thursday evenings from 8.30 until September.  The pub will give us our own room if one is available; otherwise we will meet in the main bar. This will of course be entirely informal. If you haven’t been to the club before, then you are most welcome; […]

The recently revived Connaught League began a few weeks ago. The new format this year is a knockout with quarter finals, semi finals and a final. Galway played its quarter final game with a 3½-1½ win over Ballinasloe – although the match was closer than the score suggests. This qualifies us for a semi-final against […]

The latest news on next weekends Ennis Congress is that English GMs Gawain Jones and Simon Williams will be participating! p.s. GM Mihai Suba is also playing. For further information check this out.

The final day of the NCC was a lot more successful as Galway comfortably won both matches. However we faced much weaker teams. Our match results were: [table id=2 /] We came 4th which matches our seeding. Adare had the strength in depth to cruise home in 1st place ahead of Gonzaga. Ennis came third […]

The National Club Championships are under way in Adare, Co. Limerick. Galway lost the first round to 5 – 1 to the favourites Adare. See here for individual scores. Most of us were out rated by about 300 points. Even so I think the team was a bit disappointed not to give them a better […]

This event and the associated qualification for the European Club Cup have been the source of endless controversy since Galway first played in 2005. I could run an entire blog on the various machinations of this one event! Galway has on occasion been in the eye of the storm. We used to get a free pass into […]