Munster League Division 1. Rounds 10 and 11.

This was a bad day for us in the Munster League. We lost both our matches to Adare and Limerick B. The Limerick B match was especially bad as they now leapfrogged over us in the table.

I was close to getting a draw against a much higher opponent in my first game but lost a crucial pawn in the endgame and went down from there. The second game was a disaster for me. I got a slightly better position going into the endgame - my opponent had an isolated pawn - but then I lost a piece to a pawn fork and with it, the game.

On a more amusing note, the Munster Chess Union got a little confused as to what game we were playing. We'd probably have had a better chance in the rugby!

→ posted on March 26, 2017chess

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Cork Club Championship Round 5

The club championship continued and I also continued my streak of losing to higher rated players. I had a chance to get a great position early in the opening with 9. Ng5. I looked at it, thought it was good and was going to play it. Then however I thought I would take a deeper look, completely miscalculated and convinced myself the move was bad. If I was a worse or better player I would have played the move. Unfortunately I had just enough knowledge and skill to make a complete mess of things.

After that my opponent got a great attack against my kingside and finished it off nicely. I still think I'm messing about with less active moves in these positions and should be more direct on the queenside in future.

→ posted on March 24, 2017chess

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The Pro Chess League was interesting but I didn't watch it often as there was no easy way to just watch one team's games so I couldn't easily track how the Irish team were doing. Hopefully next year each time will have their own page on the site showing just their games.

→ posted on February 25, 2017microposts

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Cork Club Championship Round 4

I played my fourth round in the Club Championship and won. I thought I was doing fine and then my opponent sacrificed a knight for a couple of central pawns and an open f-file. The computer would have been fine in this position but I wasn't! The tactical complications were too much.

I played a bad move and after e5 I spent ages trying to find a good response and failed. All I could see was diagonals opening up for his queen and bishop to complement his open file. So I sacrificed a piece back and got the queens off and started over again. I was able to win from when my opponent later dropped a piece.

That's after bringing me back to 50% in the tournament. I'm still down a few rating points but they won't be taken into account until the tournament completes so I have time to try to win them back.

→ posted on February 24, 2017chess

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Excellent post by Danny Gormally analysing the games of a 1500+ player over at GingerGM

→ posted on February 19, 2017microposts

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Started doing tactics exercises on Chessity.com and I'm tracking them here. Will see if this leads to an improvement in my general chess play

→ posted on February 12, 2017microposts

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Games for the 7th round of the Munster league were backdated in the rating system recently so I had a personal record rating of 1548 in December. Unfortunately the Mulcahy brought that down since.

→ posted on February 11, 2017microposts

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Munster League Division 1. Rounds 8 and 9.

Rounds 8 and 9 of the Munster League took place on the 5th February and the B team had a tough assignment playing Ennis A home and away. We lost boths rounds heavily - 1.5-3.5 and 1-4.

I drew my first game with black. It was a Rubenstein French which ended up in a R+Kn vs R+Kn endgame which we drew by repetition. My opponent at one stage around move 21 had a potential sacrifice of his knight on f7. Even in the analysis afterwards we weren't too sure if it worked out. One interesting thing is that my opponent spent a lot of time trying to calculate this sacrifice. I had a similar experience in the last round of the Mulcahy where my opponent spent a lot of time trying to calculate a potential attack. My new strategy is to get into a position where there is a just plausible enough attack against me so my opponents burn lots of time on their clocks and I end up with a time advantage!

The second game was a complete disaster. I had sucessfully navigated my opponents attack and just needed a couple more accurate moves - h4 and knight somewhere - and we would havea level position. Instead I didn't realise my pawn was pinned and moved my knight to where it could be taken for nothing. What an absolute disaster. We have important games coming up against Limerick so I need to be a lot sharper for those.

→ posted on February 5, 2017chess

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Cork Club Championship Round 3

I played my third round in the Club Championship and lost. I think I was ok for most of the game but then lost the plot near the end. I didn't have a clear idea of what I was supposed to be doing during most of the game. I think I should have brought my rooks over to the queenside early and pushed there.

→ posted on January 27, 2017chess

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Cork Club Ladder Round 3

I came agonizingly close to winning my third round game in the Cork Club Ladder. I had a winning position (+2.5 on the computer) at the end at move 36 and my opponent was running really short on time. I just needed to make one accurate move to bring out my knight instead of my bishop. Unfortunately I brought out the bishop first and let his rook in and lost from there.

→ posted on January 19, 2017chess

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