Irish Senior Championships 2015

cdeb wrote: »

Have been away for the past few days and while most of the above has been answered in the meantime, I just want to add the point that it's rather unfair to ask the lowest-rated player to step down if there's an odd number. He wasn't the last to enter so far as I know - why should his entry be ok at one stage but not ok later on?

I decided not to post again about the tournament until it was over, but I have to correct an incorrect statement made above. Otherwise I don't want to get into any controversies here but just present some facts and personal views. I shall read responses to this long post but probably will not post again.

I was watching the entries closely over the days leading up to the tournament (in order to prepare) and the player mentioned who entered at the last minute did have a much lower FIDE rating than anyone else. He was below 1700 and the next lowest was 1859. You are partly right in that he didn't have the lowest ICU rating but FIDE ratings apply in the championship and that is why he had the round one bye. I do agree his play on the whole justified his inclusion; inter alia, he drew with me by tenacious defence in 102 moves despite standing worse at nearly all stages of the game.

I definitely think that the speculative posting of possible entrants on the ICU website was distinctly unhelpful and was probably resented by some of the people named who did not intend to play. In fact two players were briefly listed as confirmed entries only to have their names removed from the list. I wasted some time looking at their opening repertoires in the database.

The size of the field was much smaller than I expected for a tournament held in the capital, and there was a distinct shortage of players in the 2050-2200 range. Possibly, though I'm not sure as I don't compete very often in the Irish Championship, the late (post-Easter) confirmation of the date and venue may have deterred some entries because of people needing to arrange holidays well in advance, or maybe deciding to play some other event as a result of the uncertainty. When the list did go up online, the number of juniors on it possibly deterred others from entering.

Returning to the performance of the young players, this may have been a special case this year (because of Ireland hosting the junior internationals) but the effect of their inclusion was magnified by the field being so small was rather to distort the event because most of them played better in the first three or four rounds than they did subsequently. (I have compiled an Excel spreadsheet to analyse the results but won't bore you with them here.)

The bye was an aggravating complication, modified by Gerry O'Connell taking a mid-way half-point bye for family reasons. This probably spared O'Gorman receiving the bye.

Excluding O'Donnell from the following comments (as he's already over 2200 and by now very experienced in tournaments), I suppose all but one of the teenage competitors benefited from the experience, but some of them looked very tired towards the end and their standard of play seemed to decline. The player with the lowest ICU rating had a very hard time and I hope his confidence is restored before the Glorney Cup. The only game he won was in an ending of R and a-pawn against R where the experienced MacElligott missed a forced draw (because of the clock I suppose) .

It is hard for anyone to play nine competitive games on successive days without a rest day but most of them did have the bye at some stage. I don't know why Mulligan was unable to play on the last day against Li. It should also be noted that Li and O'Gorman only reach the age of 13 this year.

On the rating issue raised by some people earlier, yes there may be a case (in view of the large number of under-rated teenagers) for ratings from the event to be recomputed iteratively, i.e. feed in the ratings achieved by the juniors on a first pass, with their high K, and then compensate the adult opponents accordingly. I don't know the rating rules; maybe this will be done anyway by FIDE and/or ICU.

Probably I will lose a lot of rating points chiefly because I didn't win several good positions but the main issue is that I had to play somebody rated 1682 when the lower ceiling specified on the entry form was 1900. I think everyone who played that young man would like to know what compensation, if any, will be applied in either or both of the two rating systems.

I did not enter the tournament to gain rating points or expect to win a prize, but I did think (based on last year's field size and composition) that when I paid my 75 Euro entry fee that I would be sure to meet on average opposition rated at my level (2085 FIDE before the event) and maybe higher if I didn't go below 50 per cent (which I didn't), resulting in more or less no change in rating or just a small gain or loss. Some of the other middle-ranked adults in the field probably had similar expectations. Actually I met a 2024 average (lower on ICU ratings)

Efforts were made to improve the playing conditions after the first weekend and the arbiter Ivan Baburin deserves compliments and thanks for running the event smoothly under the circumstances, and for inputting the game scores (several of which were of marginal legibility) and posting them online at the Chess-Results site.

I also recommend that the ICU drop the title "Irish Senior Championship" in future years and call the tournament just "Irish Championship" or some variant on that. In most chess-playing countries and FIDE the word "senior" now denotes events for players in the 50+ and 65+ age groups. It's particularly relevant when scores get into databases and people won't realise the games are actually from the premier national event of Ireland.

My final comment is to ask why don't people post here under their real names (as in the English Chess Forum where it's required, I think.) I think there ought to be a properly moderated (and not anonymous) Irish Chess Forum, in which case I might visit and post more often.