51 Competitors took part in this year’s June Congress and it was lovely to see the variety of players and personalities taking part. Depending on rating, players were placed into 7 groups of 6 in an all play all and a Swiss event of 9. This led to some very competitive matches with plenty of talking points and post match analysis! Congratulations to Colm Daly on winning Congress 2011.
Group A was very competitive with some of Ireland’s top players taking part. As well as Colm, there was last year’s winner John Delaney, Dave Fitzsimons, Paul Wallace, Peter Cafolla and Spain’s Juan Campos. Indeed Juan, a returning guest, found his Irish competitors up for the battle in a tough competitive section. It was also very nice to see Paul Wallace, who finished 3rd, over from England. Paul, from Wexford, played in the original June Congresses when they were held and run in Wexford by our very own Andrew Thomson our chief tournament controller.
Group B was equality tight with Colm Fitzpatrick & Liam Porter joint winners. These guys are some of the more competitive people in the Leinster leagues and always worth seeing. John Loughran a local teacher in Greenhills was joint third and was very proud to see one of his students win the Swiss section (see below)
Group C saw local hero Donal O’ Boyle tieing for first place with Connor O’ Donnell. In fact Group C was also affectionately know as the Creche due to the young age profile.There was no denying the quality of these youngsters and with this type of talent on the horizon Irish Chess is in good hands!
Group D saw another local winner in Joe Reid who was definitely counting his blessings after a fortunate last game win over Brendan “The Rottweiler” Evers!! Well done Joe.
Group E saw the ever popular and regular visitor Shay Scott winning first place with Keith Harbison & Martin Kelly joint second a mere half point behind.
Group F winner was Cathal Murphy with local favourite Martin O’ Donohoe in second place. Una O’ Boyle, author of the first chess book ever written in irish “Fichell” was joint third with our favourite chef Chris Parrott!
Group G was ultra competitive and close. Peter Cooke from Rathmines took top place with a 3 way tie for second between Desmond Martin, Niall Mullen and Philip Morrison.
Agnieszka Pozniak, another of the talented youngsters playing chess, won the Swiss section much to the delight of John Loughran and Drogheda Chess Club. Three tied for 2nd place, Stephen Joyce, Sean Patrick McBride and Mary Yol Montenegro.
We hope you all had a good time as our guests here in Drogheda. It was a pleasure to have you here and look forward to seeing you again next year. In the meantime if you have any comments please feel free to post here. Once again thanks for coming and hope you all had a safe journey home 😉
As part of our efforts to enhance your enjoyment and participation at our event we would be grateful if you could fill in the short survey we have in the link below. If you have 5 minutes or so we would be very grateful for any feedback
Drogheda Chess Club 
This was the first time I’ve played in your competition and I really enjoyed the ambiance, the strong opposition, good organization, the craic, and the friendliness of the natives 🙂 . I will certainly be back!
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Well done to Colm!
Also a word of congratulations to Drogheda. You manage to keep a wonderful tournament format alive, organise fine weather and great venue. Social and enjoyable and I hope you can take a breather after the stress of organising the event and realise that yet again you have had a smashing success. Entires up also I felt and very challenging for all!
thanks
John Delaney
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