The Go and Chinese Chess Congress kindly invited the ICU to run a blitz event on the opening night of their Festival. A strong, young group of chess players took up the invitation; some electing to test themselves in the Go and Chinese Chess events while others stuck with chess knowing that it could work as a nice tune-up for the Irish Blitz Championships two days later.

With David Murray, currently in a rich vein of form following victories in the Gonzaga Chess Classic and the EPT Chess-poker event held in the RDS in February, competing in the Chinese Chess event and John Courtney, a stalwart of the Trinity team currently competing for top honours in the Armstrong Cup, competing in the Go Rapidplay event, the favourites in the blitz event were Killian Delaney, Stephen Moran, Ioana Gelip, Luke Scott and Carl Jackson.

Unfortunately for Carl, he ran into an in-form Peter Carroll in round 1 who dealt a serious blow to his clubmate's challenge by defeating him. As it turned out, this would be a blow from which Carl would never recover. Carl would again feature in a David vs Goliath match a few rounds later against Panagiotis Papodopoulos who would hand Carl his second loss. Luke Scott would be out next seed to fall following a draw with David McCann and a loss to Conor Nolan.

Our three other top seeds marched on until they were forced to face off in rounds 4, 5 and 6. The result of these battles left our seeds essentially as you were as Killian defeated Ioana, Stephen defeated Killian and Ioana defeated Stephen. However, this allowed other title challengers to emerge with Marc Lincoln springing a surprise victory against Ioana and eventually finishing tied with her on 5/7 just behind Killian and Stephen who won the rest of their games.

This left Killian and Stephen on 6/7 with Stephen claiming the tie-breaker based on their earlier result. This entitled him to his choice of colour in an Armageddon match to decide the tournament. After 9 more minutes of frantic play, Killian exacted revenge for his early defeat and won the event which he hoped would give him momentum for the Irish Blitz and Rapidplay Championships which were to be sponsored by his brother...

I'd like to thank Rory Wales and Professor Liming Wang for the invitation to be a part of their event - I hope that we can return the favour in the coming months and years and build a mutually beneficial partnership. I'd also like to thank the tournament organiser - Andy Keenan who did a tremendous job recruiting players at short notice as well as raising money for charity. I'd also like to thank Dublin CC for providing equipment to us for the event.

The idea behind this partnership is to see if we can help each other grow in the future whether that be by potentially sharing venues, exploring joint projects or simply offering each other different perspectives and ideas.

Introducing the Irish Go Association:

The Irish Go Association serves to promote and administer the game of Go in Ireland. The IGA is affiliated to the International Go Federation and the European Go Federation, and represents Irish go players at the international level. Within Ireland, the IGA organises national championships and the annual Irish Go Congress, provides support for clubs and teachers, liaises with the embassies and federations of the major Go nations, and maintains the IGA website. The IGA is a voluntary organisation.