The Bunratty Chess Festival
By Gery Graham
The 20th Bunratty Chess Festival took place in the Bunratty Castle Hotel from
February 27th to March 3rd 2013 and attracted over 300 players for the first
time since 2005. This event is without doubt, the strongest weekender in Ireland
but this year, it wasn’t just a weekender, we also had the inaugural Bunratty
Chess Classic, a nine-round FIDE rated norm event. Thanks to the generous sponsorship
of Gary O’Grady and Blackthorne Transport, this event was held in the luxurious
surroundings of the Library Room in the Bunratty Castle Hotel, a perfect setting
for the players, as can been seen in the photo below.

This event started on Wednesday afternoon and finished about the same time
as the weekender, on Sunday evening. It was hoped that one of the Irish players
might score a norm here, but alas, as can be seen by the results here,
this wasn’t to be. (The GM norm would have been 6.5/9 and the IM norm for Colm
would have been 5/9). It is hoped that this event will be run again next year
giving our home players another crack at the norms on home soil. All the games
from this event can be downloaded here.
The traditional weekender was a huge success, the masters section being the
main attraction, as usual. The top two seeds were the same as last year, England’s
two super GMs, Michael Adams and Nigel Short. We also had two other GMs (Alexander
Baburin and Peter Wells ) as well as many IMs and FMs to do battle for the €1,000
first prize and the crystal trophy too.

Before play got under way, we had two high profile guests to open the event,
Jonathan O’Connor, Chairman of the Irish Chess Union, introduced Raymond Keene
(above), OBE and England’s second grandmaster after Tony Miles, to the assembled
crowd of about 200 players.

After Raymond entertained the players with his stories of previous visits to
Ireland, he introduced former World Chess Champion, Vesilin Topalov to make
the traditional ceremonial first move on board one, much to the amusement of
Mickey Adams.
The first round did see a few upsets as David Murray (Gonzaga) drew with Peter
Wells and Anthony Fox with Lawrence Trent. The only seed to lose was Fiona Steil
Antoni from Luxemburg, the girlfriend of Vladimir Hamitevici, who went down
to Arno Eliens of Holland in a close battle. The second round produced another
“upset” when Philip Short beat Alexander Baburin in this
game.

Michael Adams had a really tough struggle against Malcolm Pein (above) in the
third, many of the people watching this game thought there might be another
upset on the cards, but Mickey, as he is known in the chess world, managed to
win the
game in the end.

That’s more than Nigel Short (above) could do in his third round clash with
Richard Bates. Nigel may have been close to being lost in this
game at some point but his vast experience, and persistent resistance earned
him a hard fought half a point.

In the meantime Michael Adams (above) was mowing down opponent after opponent.
His fourth round victim, Tom Rendle IM was quoted as saying after their
game, “that wasn’t much fun”. Philip Short's campaign was going very well
until he met his namesake in the fifth round, Philip was doing fine in this
game until, short of time, he lost an important pawn allowing Nigel to win the
game.
m
Bunratty has a reputation for being the friendliest of tournaments and the
fact the it’s not FIDE rated (except for the Classic, of course) means that
the players can “relax” even while they are playing their games.
Herbert Scarry made up the database of the masters games for us, which is downloadable
from the main Bunratty Chess site
and he was asked for a selection of his favourite games from the early rounds,
his first choice was this well
played game by Alex Baburin against one of our stronger Dutch visitors.
Herbert also choose this
game by Nigel Short, which is publishable and brief (notice the way I avoided
calling this a “short” game) and while I’m sure that Aidan Rawlinson (Black)
has played better games, this wasn’t a good day at the office for him. His final
choice was also one of my favourites, Lawrence Trent great attacking
game against Gavin Wall, enjoy this one.

My choice is not a brief “publishable” game but more of a choice because of
who played the game, it’s 15-year-old Joseph McPhillips' (above) third
round win over a long established, strong English GM, Peter Wells.
In the final round Peter Wells won his game against the Spanish visiting FM,
Javier Aguera Naredo to end up on 4.5 while Joseph McPhillips must have given
Gavin Wall a bit of a fright in the following exciting
encounter. Nigel Short beat Alexander Baburin in this interesting
endgame, while it was left to Richard Bates to try to stop the immovable
force that is Mickey Adams, who, of course, was on 5/5 at the start of this
round.

On move eight Richard (above) decided that he’d offer to share the point, and
since this gave Mickey both the title and time to watch his beloved Tottenham
beat Arsenal, he wasn’t going to say no.

Michael Adams receiving his prize from Jonathan O’Connor
Final ranking (after six rounds)
Rank
|
Name |
Pts
|
Rtng
|
TPR
|
W-We
|
BH
|
BH
|
PS
|
1
|
GM
Adams, Michael |
5.5
|
2725
|
2784
|
+0.20
|
14.0
|
20.0
|
20.5
|
2
|
GM
Short, Nigel |
5.0
|
2690
|
2651
|
-0.13
|
15.0
|
23.0
|
17.5
|
3
|
IM
Bates, Richard |
5.0
|
2375
|
2657
|
+2.04
|
14.5
|
21.5
|
18.5
|
4
|
McPhillips, Joseph |
4.5
|
2132
|
2494
|
+2.66
|
15.0
|
22.0
|
16.5
|
5
|
GM
Wells, Peter |
4.5
|
2491
|
2409
|
-0.39
|
12.0
|
19.0
|
14.0
|
6
|
IM
Wall, Gavin |
4.0
|
2340
|
2296
|
-0.15
|
13.5
|
20.0
|
13.5
|
7
|
IM
Rendle, Thomas |
3.5
|
2382
|
2321
|
-0.39
|
15.5
|
23.0
|
15.5
|
8
|
FM
Aguera, Javier |
3.5
|
2417
|
2376
|
-0.14
|
15.0
|
22.5
|
15.5
|
9
|
IM
Pein, Malcolm |
3.5
|
2376
|
2317
|
-0.37
|
15.0
|
22.5
|
13.5
|
10
|
GM
Baburin, Alexander |
3.5
|
2534
|
2352
|
-1.11
|
14.0
|
21.5
|
13.0
|
11
|
FM
Short, Philip |
3.5
|
2211
|
2349
|
+1.07
|
13.5
|
20.5
|
14.5
|
12
|
IM
Trent, Lawrence |
3.5
|
2429
|
2264
|
-1.06
|
13.0
|
19.5
|
13.5
|
13
|
O'Connor, Jonathan |
3.5
|
2088
|
2294
|
+1.24
|
12.5
|
19.5
|
11.0
|
14
|
Wolferink, Frans |
3.5
|
2107
|
2196
|
+0.72
|
12.5
|
18.5
|
12.5
|
15
|
Bourached, Anthony |
3.5
|
1903
|
2129
|
+1.41
|
12.5
|
18.5
|
11.0
|
16
|
Van Der Zwet, Bart |
3.5
|
2084
|
2290
|
+1.50
|
12.5
|
18.0
|
12.0
|
17
|
IM
Orr, Mark |
3.5
|
2240
|
2235
|
+0.01
|
11.5
|
19.0
|
12.0
|
18
|
IM
Cooper, Lawrence |
3.5
|
2317
|
2236
|
-0.40
|
11.5
|
18.0
|
13.0
|
19
|
Gonzalez, Alfonso |
3.5
|
2142
|
2128
|
-0.07
|
11.0
|
16.5
|
12.0
|
The full results of the weekender competitions can be viewed here
Copyright
Graham/ChessBase