CRH Group Kilkenny Chess Congress Report

The chance to play "over the board" Chess is only returning to the Irish Chess scene in that last year or so and the first of the Irish "majors" to return was Kilkenny 2022. This year it's back and it's better than ever, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the CRH Group. It's always nice to see Chess events attracting sponsorship, it helps raise the event to new heights. The CRH Kilkenny Congress was a perfect example of this, the high-quality branding and the innovative way it was used really enhanced the look of both hotels being used.

A wonderful picture of Kilkenny Caste (I lifted this from the web!) which is just a 2 minute walk from the venues!

The CRH Kilkenny Congress is comprised of 4 sections, the Challengers section was by far the most popular, with almost 100 players, it was hosted in the Club House Hotel. The next section was the James Mason, named after a famous Chess player of the late 19th century who hailed from Kilkenny, this section had about 50 players playing. The Major section, for top "club" players had 38 players, many from abroad while the top section, the Masters had 28 players competing. All three of these sections were held in the Ormond Hotel, and the CRH branding really looked fantastic here, you can see some of it in the photos below.

Trisha Kanyamarala WIM at Kilkenny's round 1

The masters list of entrants boasted no less than 7 grandmasters, 9 international masters and an FM and CM too. I'm sure you'll be introduced to all of these players in this article below but for now, I'll just say that our 2022 Irish Ladies Champion, WIM Trisha Kanyamarala, rated at 2213 was the 17th seed! She's pictured left during her first round game against French GM Fabien Libiszewski.

Round 1, as is the custom in Chess Swiss events, pitted the top half seeds against the bottom half seeds and Trisha's brother, IM Tarun Kanyamarala had a tough first round himself. Tarum, who was Irish Chess Champion last year, has black against another French GM, Sebastian Maze.

Almost all the Top seeds came through unscathed, but not all. Our Dutch visitor, Bram van Dijk, who has been coming to Kilkenny since forever, beat IM Mark Quinn, this fine effort can be played through here.

Rafael Ninan Renji held GM Bogdan Lalic to a draw, as did Jason Liu against IM Lawrence Trent. Even the very top players were not immune to dropping the half point. Our dynamic brother and sister duo, Tarun and Trisha Kanyamarala held French GMs Sebastian Maze and Fabien Libiszewski to a draw in 2 fascinating games, Tarun's effort can be seen here, while Trisha's game is here. It should be noted that Trisha played almost all of the last 12 moves or so on nothing but the 15 second increment and held her nerve very well indeed, but she did miss a win! If she'd had more time, I'm sure she would have spotted 47.Rf6, but a draw was a great result.

The top 3 boards in the masters were going out "live" on the internet and because of the 2 draws on the top 3 boards the night before, Saturday mornings live boards featured a few new faces.

The determined face of Jurica Srbis IM at the Kilkenny Masters

1	Matthieu Cornette GM	1	Jurica Srbis IM	1
2	Alexander Baburin GM	1	Artur Davtyan IM	1
3	Matthew Turner GM	1	Jean Noel Riff GM	1

Board 3 was a relatively quick draw but the other 2 clashes were certainly not.

The top board clash of former French Champion, Matthieu Cornette GM vs Jurica Srbis IM was a really impressive game from our Frenchman, aggressive and smooth, and can be seen here. His opponent is pictured right, looking very determined indeed, but it wasn't to be in this game for Jurica.

Board 2 featured a lovely and instructive bishop of opposite colour endgame which you should definitely have a look at this game, which proves it's not only winning pawn structures that our own Mr. Baburin knows about!

Our visiting IM Lawrence Trent, who was instrumental in helping Kilkenny get the CRH sponsorship, he drew his first round encounter, then bravely survived a night out with the French lads, but still had enough in reserve to beat Trisha in this nice game. Thanks to Trisha for sportingly giving this to me, reading Lawrence's scoresheet was a task too far, even for me.

$Sebastian Maze's \$

The round 3 top boards looked like this;

1	Thibault Fantinel IM	2	Matthieu Cornette GM	2
2	Sebastian Maze GM	1.5	Alexander Baburin GM	2
3	Jean Noel Riff GM	1.5	Fabien Libiszewski GM	1.5

As almost a third of the players in the Masters are from France, it's impossible to avoid the all French pairings, and when they happen this early in the event, the inevitable quick draws occur. This happened today on boards 1 and 3 but board 2 was a true clash.

Pictured left is Sebastian Maze, on board 2 with White facing a determined Alexander Baburin, thinking, "Why me? All my buddies got a "rest round"! Sebastian certainly didn't get an easy round but he did win a titanic struggle against Alex, which can be seen here.

There was another quick draw on board 4 between IM Lawrence Trent and GM Matthew Turner, while on board 6, IM Artur Davtyan was busy fighting his way back into contention by getting the better of Jacob Flynn. On board 7, and in form Adam Collins with black played very well to hold IM Jurica Srbis to a draw leaving us with this 4th round draw for the live boards.

1	Matthieu Cornette GM	2.5	Sebastian Maze GM	2.5
2	Fabien Libiszewski GM	2	Thibault Fantinel IM	2.5
3	Tarun Kanyamarala IM	2	Artur Davtyan IM	2

Tarum Kanyamarala at the Kilkenny Masters

You might remember my remark earlier about the French lads being paired against each other and taking early draws, well, no prizes for guessing the results on boards 1 and 2, but the players on board 3 were in no mood to draw. While I haven't analysed the game between Tarun ( pictured right ) and Artur, I do get the feeling that Tarun missed a winning idea somewhere, but for me at least, despite that, this was the game of the event. The clock times are a very important part of this game, from about move 30, Artur was practically on increment only, it's a fascinating game and it can be seen here.

Other notable results from this round include Lawrence Trent's win over Alexander Baburin ( it wasn't on a live board and there's no hope of reading Lawrence's score sheet! ) and Peter Hayes's win over Trisha Kanyamarala gave him a seat on a live board for Sunday morning's 9:15am start. The pairing for this are given below.

1	Lawrence Trent IM	3	Matthieu Cornette GM	3
2	Thibault Fantinel IM	3	Matthew Turner GM	3
3	Sebastian Maze GM	3	Peter Hayes	2.5

Board 1 was a relatively quick draw, the other two live boards certainly were not, these guys came here to fight for their share of the loot! In golfing terms, this was "moving day", a win this morning would put any of these players in a very good position going into the final round.

Matthew Turner at the CRH Kilkenny Masters

Board 2 did end up being drawn but it was certainly not a quick affair. Matthew Turner ( pictured left ) is a regular visitor to Irish weekender events and, of course, is quite a strong GM, and the chances were good that he'd have the white pieces in the final round to try to push for a podium finish.

On board 3, despite the fact that Peter was having a great event, the rating gulf was just too much and Sebastian took the full point in this game. Other notable results from this round included Alexander Baburin's win over IM Jurica Srbis and Bogdan Lalic scored his first win of the event, taking the full point against Gordon Freeman. Even more important than Bogdan's first win was Fabien Libiszewski's fine endgame win over Artur Davtyan, which was unfortunately played on board 4. I will try to get this game to add it to this report at a later stage.

So the final round pairings looked like this;

1	Matthew Turner GM	3.5	Sebastian Maze GM	4
2	Matthieu Cornette GM	3.5	Jean Noel Riff	3.5
3	Fabien Libiszewski GM	3.5	Lawrence Trent IM	3.5

Peace started to break out pretty quickly after the start of the final round, within the first hour of play there were 7 draws agreed and 6 of those were on the top 7 boards! The only game of the top 7 to go beyond the hour mark was, wait for it, unbelievably, board 2. I would have put money on this one being agreed drawn before either of the other two live boards. However, peace eventually broke out here too, in face you had to go to board 8 before we got a decisive result where Gavin Wall beat Kavan Venkatesan. Alex Baburin, Tarun Kanyamarala, Gavin Wall and Peter Hayes, all Irish players finished on 3.5/6, just outside of the loot!