Irish Championships

The Irish Chess Championship has just concluded in Dublin, and I finished in joint fifth place with 5.5/9 - my best performance since coming back to chess in 2006. My most memorable game was actually the one I lost to the eventual winner of the tournament, Alex Lopez from Cork. Apart from the debacle of misremembering the start-time for that game (which I could have forfeited - Alex sportingly agreed to play it out), it was a good event for me. Particularly with the black pieces where I scored 4/5, beating Mark Orr with the Leningrad Dutch and (somewhat fortuitously) winning a double rook endgame when two pawns down against Peter Cafolla.