BCAI Open Tournament, 2010
The 2010 Braille Chess Association
of Ireland Open Tournament took
place from October 1-4. For this
tournament, marking the silver
jubilee of our association’s existence,
we returned to the Marine Hotel in
Sutton, Dublin, scene of a very
successful event in 2008. When
booking the Marine more than a year
ago we hoped for a modest increase
in the number of players, guides and
visitors from 2 years ago. Then 19
players took part and we were
hopeful that this might increase to 24
or 26. During the early months of the
year bookings were slow, but this
gave us no cause for concern. We
believed these would pick up in May
and June. When this eventually
happened we were absolutely
astonished at the level of interest.
Within a few days of each other we
learned that sizeable groups would
be coming from France and Sweden.
Suddenly, no more accommodation
was available at the Marine Hotel.
We even had to make arrangements
with the nearby Deer Park to take
some people for the Saturday night.
It was now clear that the tournament
would be played in 2 sections. The
Marine Hotel management made a
second playing room available to us
at reasonable cost. In the weeks
prior to the tournament we needed to
make some booking alterations and
the hotel handled these with great
patience and efficiency.
When we all met up on the afternoon
of Friday, 1 October, we knew that
there would be 33 players and some
20 other people. The tournament
would be organised in 2 sections,
with 20 in the open section and 13 in
the minor. Following dinner, those of
us involved in the chess immediately
made our way to our respective
tournament rooms to get the first
31 | P a g e
by Sean Loftus
Eamonn with the four players who tied for first in the major section, L to R, Marcus
Berggren (Sweden), Patrik Berggren (1st on tiebreak) Eamonn Casey, Michael Delaney
(Ireland) and Phillip Doyle (Ireland)
Photo by Michael Germaine
round underway. In this type of
tournament, played according to the
Swiss system, the higher graded
players in the top half of the draw are
paired against those in the lower half.
An additional feature of our
tournament is that players from the
same country do not meet in the first
round. In the open section 8 of the 10
games produced the expected result
with a win for the player with the
higher grade. In the other games Joe
McAloon drew with Colin Chambers
(England) and I had an unexpected
win against Markus Berggren
(Sweden).
In the minor section there were also
2 games which did not go according
to expectations. Wilfried Van Der
Velden (Belgium) lost to Bengt
Eriksson (Sweden) and John Carroll
drew with Koenraad Lecluyse
(Belgium).
Round 2 in both sections got started
at 10 am next morning. In the open 3
players emerged on full points when
this round was completed. These
were Patrik Berggren (Sweden),
brother of Markus, Philip Doyle and
Ernie McElroy. Philip and Patrik drew
their game in round 3, which allowed
Ernie to move into outright leadership
with a win against Les Whittle
(England).
In the minor section there were still 3
players on full points after round 2,
but following the afternoon games
the young Swede, Fredrik Ljungdahl,
was the only player to have won all 3
games.
For those not playing chess Barry
O’Brien’s coach tour set off from the
hotel just as the morning round was
getting started. With some 20 people
on board, the biggest number he has
ever had during one of our
tournaments, Barry certainly pulled
out all the stops to make sure that
our visitors had a full day’s activity. In
the morning they visited Farmley
House and Aras an Uachtaráin and
after lunch they went to the Guinness
Storehouse. By all accounts
everyone
enjoyed
themselves
enormously.
Irish Chess Journal