This is a busy and exciting time for the Chess world!
Candidates tournament: Aronian to win??
We will all be able to watch on internet the Candidates games during March, and we will then know who will play Magnus Carlsen in November for the World title. Surely it will be Lev Aronian of Armenia!
COMING EVENTS
Slightly more locally, for our club members, here is a short round up of some important events are coming up.
Leinster Junior Grand Prix 4: this is being held on March 18th, in Sligo, as normal on Sunday afternoon. Event and entry details It would be great to support the event and as always this junior tournament will take the Rapid chess format (15 minutes a game) It should be a good fun day out! Our own club Blanchardstown is honoured to have been selected to host the final Leinster Grand Prix 5 in May and full details will be available shortly.
Tournaments coming up
Our senior coaches Sean and Rudolf, have stressed the need for more of our juniors to play long time control games and this especially means they should participate in senior weekend tournaments! Some important events are happening over Easter.
a) Irish Junior championships:
This is scheduled to be held in Clare this year,. Full details are here. See Irish Juniors
b) Irish Chess Union events
ICU has developed a wide range of new and exciting events under their Chair John McMurrow and his team. Real challenges and improvement come for our members when we play in these long time control events. Tournaments are quite addictive of course as it allows us each to get a personal ICU rating and track our progress over time. We see how we stand compared to our peers. We can also perhaps begin our pathway to the Magnus Carlsen rating level (2864)!!
c) May and June bank holiday tournaments
In addiition you can check the ICU website for other senior tournament events. For example, our senior players will be out in force to participate in the coming bank holiday weekend events in Drogheda (June bank holiday weekend) and firstly Malahide (May bank holiday weekend).
Coming team and league events
a) O’Sullivan cup
We are currently assembling three junior squads to play in the O’Sullivan cup. This is newly redesigned by the Leinster Chess Union as a junior league and we hope to have good fortune in the new format! More details for those interested to play at the club.
b) National club championships
We hope to enter a strong senior team and will naturally seek to win the right to play in the European team championships! It may be a slight challenge but it will certainly be fun to try against the top Irish clubs!
c) Leinster Cup leagues (adult beginners)
There are a variety of leagues suitable for new adult beginners and we hope to assemble a team of four or five interested adults. Again, this is something we will arrange informally in the next weeks at the club meetings on Saturdays in Coolmine!
Update on Leinster Senior leagues
April 29th is the last day of the Leinster senior leagues.
You can check on the fortunes of your club mates by looking at the Leinster Chess Union league tables. We currently have teams in Division 2 (Heidenfeld), Division 4 (O’Hanlon) and Division 6 (Bodley North). See LCU home page
You can even check how your club coaches are personally doing! Leading the way!
Why is a Leinster Chess event being held in Sligo???