Galway Chess Team

Introduction

For many years Galway Chess Club did not have a team. There were two main reasons for this. One is that the main purpose of the Club has always been seen as being to provide a venue at which people in Galway can come and play chess. Unlike some other chess clubs, whose main purpose is to play team chess, we in Galway want to encourage chess-players of all levels. The second is that team chess in Ireland is conducted in provincial leagues, and Connaught – the province in which Galway is located – does not have enough clubs to support a provincial league. Hence we have no league to play in.

This does, however, bring an advantage. The finals of the Irish National Club Championship are a play-off between the winners of the four provincial leagues. As Connaught has no league, and Galway is without doubt the strongest chess club in Connaught, Galway receives an invitation to play in the finals. We always used to decline this invitation, as we did not feel that we could field a team that was strong enough. However, in 2005, for the first time, we accepted, and took part in the finals.

This was perhaps not the best year to change our policy. For, just the previous year, Ennis Chess Club, which is based only some 30 miles from Galway but is in the province of Munster, had embarked on a strategy of recruiting players for their team from the surrounding areas, including Galway. Hence, most of those members of Galway chess club who did want to play in a chess team, were playing for Ennis. And Ennis, aided by these Galway players, won the Munster League, and were therefore in the National Club finals. The main losses to Galway were Lorcan O’Toole and Stefan Tomeszack. As it happened, Stefan was unavailable to play for either team. But Lorcan – who is one of the most significant members of Galway Chess Club, having been on the club’s committee for several years, whilst winning the club championship in 2003-4 and coming runner-up in 2002-3 and 2004-5 – had the difficult decision of choosing which team to play for. In the end, he decided to play for Ennis, as he had been playing for them all season. Our loss was certainly Ennis’s gain. Incidentally, it says something about the friendly way that chess is played in this part of the world that this conflict has caused no ill-feeling, and relations between the Galway and Ennis clubs, and with Lorcan, remain very friendly.

2005 Irish National Club Championship

So Galway chess team’s first outing was in the finals of the 2005 Irish National Club Championship. The Munster champions were Ennis (who were the hosts); Phibsboro were Leinster champions. As Ulster did not send a representative, the fourth place was taken (as the rules stipulated) by the reigning champions, Rathmines. The team and individual results were as follows:

Round 1

	Galway		1½	Ennis		4½
Bd.	PLAYER	Rating	Result	PLAYER	Rating	Result
1	Yury Rochev	2368	0	Gawain Jones	2445	1
2	Marek Goban	2199	½	Rory Quinn	1868	½
3	Tony Aherne	1919	0	Lorcan O'Toole	1759	1
4	Pete Morriss	1862	1	Kieran O' Brien	1658	0
5	Dara Murphy	1734	0	John Cassidy	1671	1
6	Jarek Wieczorek	1700	0	John Knightson	1614	1

Rathmines

1

Phibsboro

5

Round 2

	Galway		2	Phibsboro		4
Bd.	PLAYER	Rating	Result	PLAYER	Rating	Result
1	Yury Rochev	2368	1	Johnny Joyce	2229	0
2	Marek Goban	2199	1	Stephen Brady	2346	0
3	Tony Aherne	1919	0	Joe Ryan	2308	1
4	Pete Morriss	1862	0	Richard O' Donovan	1981	1
5	Dara Murphy	1734	0	Dave Salter	1916	1
6	Jarek Wieczorek	1700	0	Tony Mooney	1856	1

Ennis

1½

Rathmines

4½

Round 3

	Galway		2	Rathmines		4
Bd.	PLAYER	Rating	Result	PLAYER	Rating	Result
1	Yury Rochev	2368	1	Daire McMahon	2203	0
2	Marek Goban	2199	0	Mel O' Cinneide	2220	1
3	Tony Aherne	1919	1	Derek Smith	1968	0
4	Pete Morriss	1862	0	Walter Stassen	1922	1
5	Dara Murphy	1734	0	Garth Fitzmaurice	1922	1
6	Jarek Wieczorek	1700	0	John Aherne	1886	1

Phibsboro

2

Ennis

4

Final Scores
Phibsboro	11
Ennis	10
Rathmines	9½
GALWAY	5½

We were the weakest team, and although we (deservedly) came last, we were not disgraced; the final scores do not represent the closeness of the contests, as all the games were long and hard-fought. It was a challenge to play our first team event against such strong opposition, and we learnt a lot from the event. Ennis are to be congratulated both for being excellent hosts, and for playing extremely well, particularly in the last round.

2006 Irish National Club Championship

In 2006, Galway again entered a team, and this time was asked to host the event, which we were happy to do. Two of our opponents were the same as the previous year: Ennis (Munster champions again) and Rathmines (who this time qualified as Leinster champions). Ulster again did not send a representative, and Phibsboro – the reigning champions – declined the fourth spot as they did not feel that they could raise a strong enough team. Kilkenny, who were runners-up in Leinster, made up the numbers. The Galway team was slightly weaker than in 2005, as Tony Aherne has given up chess (we hope temporarily) to concentrate on his studies. We were ranked as the weakest team. Kilkenny were clearly the strongest, even though they were missing their best player, the Ireland number one, Grandmaster Alex Baburin. Rathmines were missing their two best players, which seemed to unsettle them (even though they still had a strong team by our standards). But that should not take anything away from the performance of the Galway team, for everybody played exceptionally well. In the first round we beat Ennis 3½-2½; in the second we lost to Kilkenny by 2-4, which was a very good result. The championship is decided on game points, not match points, so we entered the final round in third place: Kilkenny had 8½, and already were virtually guaranteed of winning the championship, Ennis had 6½ but still had to play Kilkenny, Galway had 5½ and Rathmines 3½. We therefore needed to score one more point against Rathmines than Ennis scored against Kilkenny if we were to come second. (If we tied with Ennis, we would go through, as we had won our individual match.) Drawing level with Ennis seemed unlikely, as on paper we would expect to lose to Rathmines by about 2-4, whilst Ennis were certainly strong enough to get a game point, even against a team as strong as Kilkenny. However, we were on a roll, and Rathmines were perhaps feeling deflated. The contest went right down to the wire, before we managed to gain second place, by just half a point from Ennis.

The full results are as follows. Notice that all our opponents put out their strongest team against us, whilst in other games some of their top players were rested or unavailable. Particularly noteworthy was that International Master Mark Quinn played (for Kilkenny) only in their match against us, and we also had to face IM Petr Neuman. Both players came up against Marek Goban – who had the excellent score of 1½/2 against them. Another astonishing result was captain Pete Morriss’s win against Carl McPhillips (who is graded nearly 400 points higher); the game is given below. Dara Murphy, Zaidan Zulkipli, and Indy Banerjee also had outstanding results against much higher-rated opponents. Yury Rochev performed as reliably as ever on top board, whilst Jarek Wieczorek was unlucky to lose his one game, against a very strong player.

Round 1

	Galway		3½	Ennis		2½
Bd.	PLAYER	Rating	Result	PLAYER	Rating	Result
1	Yury Rochev	2368	0	Gawain Jones IM	2445	1
2	Marek Goban	2131	1	Petr Neuman IM	2405	0
3	Dara Murphy	1828	0	Rory Quinn	2023	1
4	Pete Morriss	1886	½	Lorcan O'Toole	1779	½
5	Zaidan Zulkipli	1641	1	John Cassidy	1742	0
6	Indranil Banerjee	1644	1	Nick Larter	1706	0