Chess

Reader Warning: What follows is a rather self-indulgent and overly nostalgic description of my chess career! I began playing chess in Kilkenny, Ireland aged 11 at the club of my first chess coach, the incredible Darko Polimac. I am a former British Junior Champion (U18) and 4-time Irish Junior Champion (U14, U16, U18). I became a FIDE Master aged 17 and played board 3 on the Irish Men’s Olympiad Team at the 2012 Istanbul Olympiad. I hold 2 International Master norms both made in the year 2013 from the 4 Nation’s Chess League (4NCL) and the 2013 Czech Open in Pardubice. At my peak I was ranked Irish number 4. Although my current FIDE rating is 2352 I retired from serious chess in 2013 to focus on a career in machine learning. Pictured right is me playing in my first master’s tournament aged 12, the youngest Irish player ever to do so! For some antiquated and quite frankly very strange videos of me playing chess see the following video from the 2011 European Chess Championship (timestamp 2:10) and this video and this video from the 2013 Czech Open.

Playing in the IM norm group at the First Saturday tournament in Budapest 2007. I played about 7 or 8 First Saturday tournaments from the ages of 13-16. They were fantastic events that brought together players from across the globe. Many notable names such as World Championship Candidate Fabiano Caruana, Women’s World Champion Hou Yifan, and top Indian Grandmaster S.P. Sethuraman have played in First Saturday tournaments. Would thoroughly recommend.

In 2011 I played in the Hastings Masters. I recall after a somewhat average start to the tournament I managed to beat Australian IM Aleksander Wohl with the black pieces, leading, in the next round to the pictured game with White against Indian Grandmaster Deep Sengupta. I lost very quickly having displaced my knight on a3 in an English. I remember that after the game, my Dad, who had been watching the game in the commentary room, relayed to me the commentators comments on my lack of appreciation for classicial chess principles! Following the loss to Sengupta I needed to beat IM Richard Bates with Black to make an IM norm, something I failed to do!

In 2012 I had my annus mirabilis, putting in my best chess performance ever at the 2012 Paris Championship where in 9 rounds I lost just a single game to Serbian Grandmaster Aleksa Strikovic (which happens to be the one pictured!). My tournament performance rating was ca. 2530 and I was also fortunate to win the prize for the best junior! Although my performance was well above the threshold for an IM norm unfortunately I did not make it due to a technicality, the fact that I had played 7 French players in 9 games. Another highlight of this tournament was my roommate Callum Kilpatrick getting an official warning from the tournament officials for wearing flip-flops to one of his games!

In August 2012, I represented Ireland in the 2012 World Junior Chess Championship in Athens, Greece. Unfortunately, the Irish Chess Union could only afford to send a single player. Travelling alone, however, I managed to run into the Welsh, Scottish, and British delegations at Stansted Airport and ended up sharing a room with Welsh player Ashley Davis. I had a strong start to the tournament, beating American Grandmaster Conrad Holt in the 2nd round and Italian Grandmaser Axel Rombaldoni in the 5th round. Despite holding my own, for some time the field eventually proved too strong. I suffered a string of losses to Peruvian Grandmaster Jorge Cori, Dutch Grandmaster Robin van Kampen, and Russian IM Grigory Oparin. Despite this, I still had an opportunity to make an IM norm by beating my former roomate Callum Kilpatrick (who had had a terrible start after bizarrely losing to a little kid in the first round!). Unfortunately I lost this game. The picture is from the night before the rest day with GM Aman Hambleton of the famous Chessbrah YouTube channel, GM Das Debashis, IM Anwesh Upadhyaya, and IM Yang-Fan Zhou.

In September 2012 just before starting my undergrad at Imperial College London, I played on board 3 for the Irish Men’s team at the 2012 chess Olympiad. After a first round walkover against Sierra Leone (who had had difficulty travelling to the tournament) we were paired with Azerbaijan in the second round who counted SuperGMs Shakriyar Mamedyarov and Teimour Radjabov in their team. After 6 hours of play against GM Rauf Mamedov, I had a winning position. At a critical juncture, however, I chose the safer of two “winning” continuations only to fall foul of a knight fork I had missed which led to a draw. the Azeri coach Tukmakov (a former coach of Garry Kasparov) pointed out the other winning continuation to me after the game. Nonetheless, the game was still mentioned in the US’s news roundup. Towards the end of the tournament I contracted a horrendoues bout of food poisoning that relegated me to the hotel room for the final round match against the Dominican Republic.

I don’t think this description would be complete without an actual chess game. Here’s a game I played at the 2011 European Youth Chess Championship in Albena, Bulgaria. The game was in the 6th hour of play and it looks like Black is close to achieving a draw as White will be unable to win the two Black pawns and even so Rook + Bishop vs. Rook is a theoretical draw. However, Black has just played 1…Rg7. Does White have any opportunity to win the game? Find the solution below!

I retired from serious chess in 2013 due to the demands of pursuing a career in machine learning. 2012-2013 was already a challenging year playing constantly against chess professionals while not being a full-time chessplayer myself. Nonetheless, I remained somewhat active, ironically making IM norms in the 4 Nation’s Chess League and the 2013 Czech Open. After 2013, I continued to play for Barbican in the 4NCL until I left for the USA in 2022. A highlight of this time was playing for Cambridge University in 4 Varsity matches against Oxford (pictured) a tradition that stems back to 1873

Puzzle Solution: White can play 2. Bf7! placing Black in Zugzwang. The Black rook is unable to move and 2…g5 fails to 3.Ra6+ which forces Black to give up the Rook after 3…Rg6 4.Bxg6. Needless to say my opponent was livid after botching the draw.