The Flynn's night out

Well its that time of the year again when the famous Cavan blitz competition rolls around as the best players in the North Midlands compete for the Pat Ryan memorial trophy.

The weather being what it was at first it looked like nobody would come but after a while we got 10 players competing who were divided by lot into two pools in which each player would play everyone else with two players from each group playing in the next round. The groups were:  

Pool A
Oisin Connolly
John Ferguson
Thomas Higgins
Eoghan McCormack
Brian Nugent
Gareth (whose surname escapes me), from Redhills

Well the initial drama in the first group was that Oisin beat John who is arguably the most experienced blitz player in the competition. John was just limbering up and proceeded to beat by the skin of his teeth Thomas while a queen down - he managed to eek out a lucky checkmate - but nonetheless he was now down against Oisin for the second place spot. Oisin drew against Thomas in a fiercely contested very close game so it came down to the wire with Oisin only needing a half point to go through playing his last game against Eoghan. Eoghan was having no luck at all so it really looked like a foregone conclusion but observers of the match were a bit shocked to see that Eoghan had other ideas and was carving up one side of Oisin's position. After that wobble Oisin recovered though and enticed Eoghan into taking his rook with his Queen which left open a sly checkmate. So Oisin survived and John was knocked out while Brian was lucky enough to take the other slot in Pool A.

Pool B
Ruari Connolly
James Fallon
Philip Finnegan
Gerry Flynn
Seamus Flynn
Frank McCormack
 
While initial highlights included Ruari's win over Phillip this group really centred on whether or not James could break up the Flynns regal procession to the semi finals. Seamus only lost to Gerry, who had beat James under time pressure and was the unbeaten winner of the group, so it came down to a straight fight between James and Seamus in the last game to decide the last spot. At first observers thought that maybe these two big beasts from the O'Hanlon team had mistaken this for a drinking competition as they insisted on finishing their pints while eyeing one another suspiciously like Russian sailors trying to drink each other under the table with vodka shots! (And actually when the competition finished they started a fiercely competitive rematch, as if they are also deciding who should occupy the top spots on the O'Hanlon team!) Eventually the mind-games/Dutch-courage-imbibing session was over and they ambled over like boxers going into the ring to play their very close tense match. It was nip and tuck until Seamus reckoned he saw something, swapped off a few pieces and put James' knight in a pin with his king on the back rank. James tried to shore it up but with Seamus' bishop entering the fraw there was no real remedy so James started to concede ground and then under pressure Seamus's rook began to mop up and it was all over.

Semi-Finals
The semi-finals were then the winner of Pool A against the runner up of Pool B and runner up of Pool A against the winner of Pool B, which amounted to firstly:

Brian Nugent (white) v. Seamus Flynn (black)
This turned out to be quite an open contest with pieces being left hanging all over the place as both players vied for some kind of decisive advantage. White had a reasonably good attack going with the white queen, and a knight, loitering with intent around black's queen side rook, so much so that Black was unable to castle. But then the g file opened up and Seamus was able to get his rook dominating that line against white's king. With that plus his bishop who was active in the area he was beginning to get at least as good an attack going himself and was slightly ahead in a close game until he put his queen on the second rank. The idea was to line up with the rook on the g file, threatening checkmate and white distracted by that threat was busy pulling his rook back to shore up the position when he was shocked to see his queen taken by black's queen! It turns out that initially not seen by both players his queen was on the same diagonal as the other queen, either could take each other without compensation and a relieved Seamus duly obliged!
White had a little advantage in time, I think about 50 seconds to Seamus' 30, and still had two rooks left so proceeded to attack with them and got both of them on the 7th rank hoping to at least get a perpetual check on the king. But Seamus dug a few good saving moves out of the locker and as white tried to figure out some way through the fortress his flag fell. So Seamus emerged as the worthy winner, if a lucky one!lol

Gerry Flynn v. Oisin Connolly
Gerry and Seamus of course are very experienced old stagers of the Cavan chess club, well used to tight competitive games and Gerry was able to put the experience to good effect when sparing with the up and coming Oisin. Initially it was very close and then Gerry went a piece up however Oisin had something like a minute advantage on time. So Oisin felt he might as well go for it on time and he raced through the succeeding moves, falling for Gerry's traps though as the latter forked his king and queen among other breakthroughs. But Oisin had got his king into the middle of his own well fortified pawn structure and it looked for a while like the gamble might have paid off as he still had that minute in time and Gerry was left with only his queen to try to get checkmate on the exposed king. However Gerry played it cool and worked it out in such a way that he was two steps away from queening his pawn so that was that and Oisin resigned. Gerry's coolness under time pressure was the key but you cannot help thinking that experience was gained and that it would be a lot closer in a rematch!

Final
So the final turned to be a contest as to where the trophy was to be positioned on the same mantlepiece!:

Gerry Flynn v. Seamus Flynn
Gerry is Seamus' father and they are both good cool able blitz players so it was always going to be difficult to tell who would win this one. After a very even opening Seamus got a little edge with a few pawns and Gerry finding himself under slight time pressure - I think he was 10 seconds behind most of the time - started to give ground as he tried to make up the time and in due course Seamus pulled ahead with an easy enough win at the end.

So Seamus Flynn turned out to be the worthy winner of the Pat Ryan trophy and after the usual speeches - or more accurately the usual mention of speeches which I think amounted to a laugh!lol - Seamus was presented with the trophy and both he, Gerry, Oisin and Brian were also given prizes.

Many many thanks to John Ferguson for organising it and also to the staff and management of the Orchard pub, as always, and all who took part.