A message from the Chairperson

I wanted to take this opportunity to wish all of our members a Happy Christmas and thank you all for your continued support. Personally, I have been thrilled with both the growth of the Irish Chess Union over the past year but also the progress that has been made in striving toward some of our other collective goals including senior chess, providing more support to our top players, and putting more junior events on the calendar. However, there is always room for improvement and plans are already afoot for many new events, projects and ideas in 2018. Speaking of new events...

Upcoming Events

The Philip Hogarty 10 Year Memorial will commence on January 1st, 2018 and has long been a project of mine designed to honour my friend and predecessor, Philip Hogarty who tragically passed away on January 1st 2008. The event will be run with the help of many volunteers including Stephen Stokes (and the rest of the LSCA committee), Ivan Baburin, Herbert Scarry, Paul Leavy, John Kelly and myself but I must also thank our donors for the event including Ray Byrne, Arthur Cox, and Blanchardstown CC. The first event will be one of Ireland's largest junior events, The Leinster Junior Championships 2018 which runs from 1-4 January. That will be followed by The Irish 50+/65+ Championships 2018 and Irish New Year Norm Events 2018 sponsored by Arthur Cox which run from January 3-7 while the festival closes with The ICU Winter Blitz 2018 sponsored by Jobstown CC. We really hope you will be able to make it to watch/play in one of these events.

That event will be followed closely by The 50th Mulcahy Memorial 2018 which runs from the 12-14 January and we're sure the tournament organiser, Pat Twomey, will be pulling out all the stops to emulate one of their best ever events last year when entries were up by over 50%. For those who have not played in the event before, it is an open event which anyone can play in and already has three of Ireland's top players committed to playing: IM Alex Lopez, FM Colm Daly, and Henry Li. You can read more about the event, see the current list of entries and enter here.

The final event of January is The Gonzaga Charity Classic 2018 sponsored by CPL, MHL & modern-chess.com which will be held in Gonzaga College SJ, Sandford Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6. The (first-time) organisers have done an outstanding job at recruitment this year with 11 titled players including 5 GMs and 20 entrants to the masters in all. They have also secured the sponsorship of CPL who have certainly helped in their endeavours. Proceeds as always will go to a very worthy cause. You can read more about the event, see the current list of entries and enter here.

February is headlined by The 25th Annual Bunratty Chess Festival which needs little introduction. This year sees the return of former 2-time champion, GM Peter Svidler, who recently won his 8th Russian title and also climbed back into the world's top ten! Not only that but there are also already 11 other confirmed GMs including last year's returning champion, GM Nigel Short, and we're sure that the organisers will once again expect to breach the 300 entrant mark. Read more about the event here and enter here.

We wish all of you the very best of luck for 2018 and look forward to seeing you at many of the aforementioned events throughout the year!

Kind Regards,

John McMorrow