Spring Tournament brings talented chess players from near and far to west Sligo this weekend
THIS weekend the Diamond Coast Hotel will be home to a plethora of tactical battles.
The Ennisctone hotel will play host to the Sligo Spring Chess Tournament which takes place from tomorrow, Friday, until Sunday.
The tournament is FIDE(Fédération Internationale des Échecs, aka the International Chess Federation) and ICU (Irish Chess Union) rated
FIDE and the ICU maintain player ratings. The tournament will meet certain organisational standards which will allow the games played to affect both of these ratings for a player. Although ICU-rated tournaments are common, FIDE ones are less so.
The tournament is broken up into four rating bands: Master, Championship, Major and Challenger. Competing among the masters, who boast a score of 1800, are grandmaster Alex Baburin and Evgeniya Doluhanova, the latter of whom is an invited guest to the tournament. Chess is a game played broadly by people of all ages, and age is certainly no barrier when it comes to your potential opponent as 11-year-old Andrey Ivanov and 13-year-old Jason Liu will be competing at the highest grade level of this tournament! Among those competing at the second highest grade will be ATU Sligo scholar Eichia Ni Mhuireagain. The Manorhamilton native was a member of the Irish Women’s team which competed at last summer’s Chess Olympiad in India. Her father Colm is also a keen chess player who has represented Ireland in the past and will be the chief arbiter at this tournament. A member of Sligo Ukrainian refugee community will also compete at this level, 13-year-old Lukian Hushpit. Lukian was an under-12 champion in Ukraine and won the Major section at last year’s tournament.
Sligo Chess Club and ATU Sligo
Chess Club represented.
Sligo Chess Club members competing this weekend are as follows: Timothee Long, Sasa Masic, Tugdaul Drogou, Ainle Drogou, Brian Caliendo, Arro O’Reilly, Karl Muller, Noel Farry, Stephen Downey, Yannick will both be well
Woods, David Hewitson and Lukian Hushpit. The ATU Sligo Chess Club members competing this weekend are: Nhat Long Van Pham, Jamie Bredin, Mikulas Novotny, Ben Hogan, Michael Crawford, Vaibhav Anil Kumar, Joshua Donnellan, Fergal Gallagher, Chris Curran, Eibhia O’Muireagain, Alex Koukalova, Jan Nemecek and Luc Dober.
In total there will be five rounds played across three days starting at 7pm tomorrow, Friday; 10am on Saturday; 3pm on Saturday; 9am on Sunday; 2pm on Sunday.
The awards ceremony will then take place at 6pm on Sunday.
Game times are expected to vary wildly, some may end in a matter of minutes, some could last for up to three-and-a-half hours.
The entry fee is 55 euros until pairings are completed. Registration is still open after this point but will cost 60 euros and participation in the first round will not be permitted.
The prize money for each category is as follows: Major - 1st €600, 2nd €300, 3rd €175; Championship - 1st €400, 2nd €200, 3rd €115; Major - 1st €300, 2nd €150, 3rd €75; Challenger - 1st, €200, 2nd €100, 3rd €50.
There will also be cash prizes in a range of specific categories such as Best Under-12 Challenger, Best Championship woman and Best Championship Over-50.
The tournament will also be going international for certain games as Irish Master Diana Mirza provides live commentary on some games on her Twitch channel.
24 of the chess boards will be smart boards. These smart boards are able to detect the position of the pieces and transmit the games as they happen to the internet. Diana can then display virtual representations of these games on her twitch channel, along with a video feed of herself, and talk about what is happening, who is winning a particular game and why, and be a window into what is going on in specific games and the tournament as whole to chess and non-chess players alike.
The tournament is sponsored by Chessable, Abtran, Dunnes Stores, and Liber.