Williamson Shield Day 2

At the end of Day 1 Gareth Annesley had enjoyed a full-point lead over his six nearest pursuers. However that buffer zone disappeared when he lost to Nicholas Pilkiewicz in the Sunday morning round.

Annesley got back on track with a win over WFM Karina Kruk in Round 5 and going into the final round he was joined on 4 points by Pilkiewicz and John McKenna, Only these three could still win the Shield. 

Pilkiewicz had already played his two joint-leaders, so he floated down to play Kruk in Round 6. Their game ended in a draw and Annesley's win against McKenna gained Gareth his fourth Williamson Sheld title.

Final crosstable

No Name                  Rtg  Club          Total  1    2    3    4    5    6  

1  Gareth Annesley       1908 Muldoons      5      7:W  6:W  5:W  2:L  4:W  3:W
2  Nicholas Pilkiewicz   1847 Muldoons      4.5    8:W  9:D  3:D  1:W  7:W  4:D
3  John McKenna          1510 Belfast South 4     14:W  4:D  2:D  6:W  5:W  1:L
4  Karina Kruk           1646 Ballynafeigh  3.5   12:W  3:D  9:D  8:W  1:L  2:D
5  Mikhail Pavlov        1766 Ballynafeigh  3.5   11:W 10:W  1:L  9:W  3:L  8:D
6  Richard Gould         1536 Belfast South 3.5   16:W  1:L  7:D  3:L  0:W 12:W
7  Modestas Razbadauskas 1346               3.5    1:L 16:W  6:D 12:W  2:L  9:W
8  Patrick McKillen      1334 Muldoons      3.5    2:L 13:W 10:W  4:L 14:W  5:D
9  Robert Lavery         1649 Ballynafeigh  3     13:W  2:D  4:D  5:L 10:W  7:L
10 John Phillips         1392 Enniskillen   3     15:W  5:L  8:L 11:W  9:L 16:W
11 Gary Johnston         1275 Bangor        3      5:L 15:W 12:L 10:L 16:W 14:W
12 Roy Stafford          1243               2.5    4:L 14:D 11:W  7:L 13:W  6:L
13 Adrian Dornford-Smith 1155 NICS          2.5    9:L  8:L 14:D 16:W 12:L  0:W
14 Vincent O'Brien        955 Ballynafeigh  2      3:L 12:D 13:D 15:W  8:L 11:L
15 Rhys McLean            692 Ballynafeigh  1     10:L 11:L  0:W 14:L  0:   0: 
16 Geoff Hindley         1040 NICS          .5     6:L  7:L  0:D 13:L 11:L 10:L

Numbers down at Williamson Shield

Recent editions of the Williamson Shield have been very well attended but this year's renewal has run into something of a perfect storm. The Williamson is clashing with the Gonzaga Classic - while I think this has happened before, this time the marketing onslaught for the Dublin event has launched it into a different league. At least five local players decided to head south to see what all the fuss is about.

Perhaps even more significant for the Williamson numbers is that running next weekend is another local six-round Swiss, new to the calendar - a charity event run by the burgeoning QUB Chess Club. It will be interesting to see how many turn out for this newcomer.

Two former winners of the famous Shield, Gareth Annesley (2009, 2014, 2016) and Nicholas Pilkiewicz (2000), are competing again this year. After close of play on Day 1 Gareth was leading after three straight wins. Six players share second place, a full point behind. The UCU live pages should have regular updates

Your correspondent had time for a couple of friendly quickplay games with Brendan Jamison before taking these photographs of the Round 3 action.

Nicholas Pilkiewicz

John McKenna

Razbadauskas (White) -v Gould

Dornford-Smith (White) -v- O'Brien

Curiosity killed the cat

On the Ballynafeigh CC website, its "Off The Chest" page has a rather curious comment from "Baseball" which is date-stamped December 23, 2016 at 22:07.

However will we make the tea now?

The comment did not seem to refer to anything further up the page and to date there have been no further comments of any nature at "Off The Chest". Of course, sometimes late at night people say the strangest things on social media, even people about to obtain very high office. Still, "Baseball", whoever they might be 😕, usually seems to be someone out to make a point. So was there something of significance behind the comment? Oh, it is irritating when you are outside the loop.

Anyway,  I was researching for a future blog post about ratings (coming soon to this blog) when I came across, on another emanation of Ballynafeigh chess, something that might resolve the issue of the curious comment.

That "something" was that two members of the UCU Board, the Chairperson of Code of Conduct Committee, Brendan Jamison and National Arbiter, Richard Gould had both resigned on 21 December 2016. As far as I can see, there is nothing to confirm this on the official UCU website but as the news of the resignations appears on the emanation hosted by Brendan Jamison, I dare say this is reliable information.

This out of the loop cat is still curious.