Bunratty Masters Champion!

Thank you in advance to everyone who reads my first blog for Chess.com!

To bring things up to date, and because for a change I won a chess tournament, I am writing about my most recent event and will wrap up the LCC, Baden-Baden, and Gibraltar soon. I garnered a lot of enjoyment and chess education in weekend tournaments, and it is sad to now see few interesting events of this type in England. Fortunately the scene is much more vibrant in Ireland and they are very welcoming to English players, so I was happy to make my second visit to Bunratty for their event.

Although the tournament has a big social side (one of my opponents almost fell off his chair during our game, and needless to say it wasn’t due to shock at my move) the chess is quite serious, and due to the magic of sensitive boards rather than trying to decipher my Guinness stained scoresheets evidence of my play remains. I have made a few comments to my first 5 games (round 6 was a bit brief!)

In round 1 I was happy to adjourn to the bar with a point on the board fairly quickly, admittedly more due to luck than judgement.

The next morning game with Mark Orr I have annotated in a little more detail, his rook ran into trouble in an unusual manner.

Round 3 I was lucky again as I gambled in an unpromising ending and got rewarded for it.

In the stamina sapping third game on Saturday I managed to avoid major errors, which is often good enough at that stage.

On Sunday I achieved a more promising moves played to drinks consumed ratio as I scored a swift victory in the morning and halved out in the afternoon.

Thanks to all involved with the event especially www.blackthornetransport.co.uk Gary O’Grady, and Gerry Graham for their great efforts.

If you have not visited before please check out my website www.michaeladamschess.co.uk where my previous blogs are posted.