European Club Cup 2019

RooksPawn

Two Dublin clubs are representing Ireland in the European Club Cup 2019 out in Montenegro.

Congratulations to St. Benildus who today won their second round match against higher rated opposition. Also to Gonzaga who drew their match after a narrow defeat in round 1.

Results at http://chess-results.com/tnr462794.aspx?lan=1&art=3&rd=2&turdet=YES&flag=30&zeilen=99999

Unfortunately the games in the lower matches are not going out live so we are unlikely to be able to follow the Irish teams live unless they can win a couple more matches.

Will somebody out there please report from the coalface for us?

cdeb

https://stbenilduschessclub.wordpress.com/2019/11/11/st-benildus-3%c2%bd-2%c2%bd-modra/

RooksPawn

I see from chess-results.com that this event ended yesterday with some reasonable Irish results.

Benildus drew their last match [see a report on their site linked above] and so avoided the wooden spoon with 3MP, while Gonzaga won theirs so finished with 5 MP.

Because the opposition was so strong, most Irish players actually gained FIDE rating points, notably Peter Carroll (board 5 for Gonzaga) who scored 4.5/7 and gains over 60 points. Gordon Freeman also made that score and Killian Delaney gained points with 50%. Carl Jackson also scored 50% but lost points because one of the people he beat had no FIDE rating. Many teams put out their reserves against him.

Best performer on the Benildus team was Kevin Burke who won two games and his 2/5 gained 9.2 points. Their top board Constantin Vogel rescued his result by beating an IM in the last round and ended up +10. No Irish player went home pointless.

The traditional East European dominance of this event was ended by the nominally Italian team Obiettivo Risarcimento Padova (they had Italians on the reserve boards) who won all their matches.

cdeb

Dylan Boland also scored 2/5 for us.

Enjoyable week overall. Pity only two Irish teams entered, but obviously it's not for everyone and getting 6 players of relevant strength can be hard; you're going to get 1900 on average on board 6 at the bottom of the draw. Reduced the chance of a derby of course.

Lack of live boards was a big negative unfortunately. Weather was - interesting!

Decent shows by both teams overall in what was a very strong competition. Our round 2 win v Modra was probably one of the upsets of the tournament - expected score was 1.5, but we got 3.5. We paid for that in the next two rounds of course! Peter Carroll's 4.5/7 apparently entitles him to a CM title.

Kosovan side beat a Serbian side 5-0 on the last day - the Serbians refused to play, as did one Kosovan, so all the games were defaulted

Retd.LoyolaCpt

cdeb wrote: »

Dylan Boland also scored 2/5 for us.

Enjoyable week overall. Pity only two Irish teams entered, but obviously it's not for everyone and getting 6 players of relevant strength can be hard; you're going to get 1900 on average on board 6 at the bottom of the draw. Reduced the chance of a derby of course.

Lack of live boards was a big negative unfortunately. Weather was - interesting!

Decent shows by both teams overall in what was a very strong competition. Our round 2 win v Modra was probably one of the upsets of the tournament - expected score was 1.5, but we got 3.5. We paid for that in the next two rounds of course! Peter Carroll's 4.5/7 apparently entitles him to a CM title.

Kosovan side beat a Serbian side 5-0 on the last day - the Serbians refused to play, as did one Kosovan, so all the games were defaulted

3.5 is enough for CM so ditto for Carl Jackson. (Same for Gordon and Killian but they previously qualified by being 2200+). 5.5 would have been enough for FM titles; but Killian edged closer to the FM title as is with 3.5 - enough to take him to about 2280 live.