Most controversial game ever in the Irish Chess Championships?

brianhere

You can see the full game at this site: http://www.chess-results.com/partieSuche.aspx?lan=1&art=4&tnr=179720&rd=9 . It's the final round of the Irish Senior Championships, Philip Short (White) v. Colm Daly (Black), and the diagram below is after Black's 58th move of King to d7. White had checked him on the top rank and the king moved there, from e8, rather than stay in touch with his pawn on f7 by going to e7.



By doing this White now has the option of moving his queen across on the top rank to f8 which locks the king out of protecting the f7 pawn, which in turn now has to fall and with it the other pawn no doubt. Its true that Black has a check but it doesn't seem to go anywhere so basically White has now won because of Black's blunder. But actually he didn't see it so the game just ended in a draw with a few repetitions.

In any case blunders happen but a lot of people are wondering why Black declined the draw which White had offered a short time earlier. I mean Black is down the pawn anyway and if White is offering the draw it means he isn't going to press things and then how could Black have any hope of breaking open that kind of position?

So there are a few eyebrows raised about this game, it seems some people are of the view that Daly was trying to lose it and that moving his king to d7 was deliberately throwing the game? Incidentally its reported that Short was a little tight on time whereas Daly had plenty.

The why, if this is what happened, is easy enough to say. The situation is that if Daly draws this game then his arch rival in the pantheon of recent Irish Championship winners, Stephen Brady, becomes the joint winner and hence has won the chess equivalent of the five-in-a-row, a record equalling 9 wins, whereas if Daly loses then Brady loses out too, Short becomes the sole winner.

So what do people think, could it just be a mistake - at the end of a long competition - or would you tie it to the mysterious declining of the draw offer in a clearly drawn position? Incidentally on this site Zugswang drew attention to that move when he was looking at it in the database online and cdeb thought it must be a clerical error - the moves were taken down manually and inputted later into the computer -, a verdict with which Tim Harding heartily agreed (because on first glance none of these commentators thought that expert chess players could have made those mistakes) but no, people live at the game say it definitely did happen like that ( http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057413531&page=5 ).

Also the Ballynafeigh chess site in Belfast has aired information that alleges that Daly told some person prior to the game that if such a scenario arose that he would indeed throw the game: https://ballynafeighchess.wordpress.com/commentsideasgripes/ . Colm Daly, who is also the Irish Chess Union's Public Relations Officer, has written on that site but has not commented on that game.

So what's the verdict, could he have thrown it? If so was he right to throw it and make it difficult for Brady? After all chess players are entitled to make it difficult for people to break records like this so easily? Or is deliberately losing a game completely beyond the pale in terms of chess ethics?

checknraise

It's not what you know, it's what you can prove.

Did Colm try and throw the game - probably. Has he made similar blunders in the past - yes.

Only Colm knows the answer.

mikhail

It seems an unlikely pair of blunders, but stranger things have happened, and doubt we'll ever know for sure. I don't see the point in speculating based on some anonymous source.

brianhere

Yes probably nobody can really tell, and anyway we should err on the side of believing the best, but why turn down a draw in that position?

L1m1tless

I have to close this thread. This is all only speculation and has no place here.
Please refrain from further accusations of this kind without some solid proof.

Thanks
NN