Leinster Rapidplay 2008
3 May 2008, Michal Kolesar
When we received confirmations from Mark Heidenfeld IM, Mark Quinn IM, and Colm Daly FM on Friday evening, it seemed certain that the inaugural Leinster Rapid which we hosted on Sat, 3 May was going to attract a strong field. 13 players with ratings over 2000 registered in the end, with 44 players taking part in total—a much longer list that we expected!
To break with the Irish tradition, the tournament started with only a 10 minute delay, after I (acting as the arbiter) was foolish enough to remind the players about FIDE rule 10.2, claiming draws with less than two minutes on the clock. What I thought was going to be a few relaxed, friendly games turned out to be an exciting, competitive event, with only 12 draws out of 132 games! The downside of it of course was that I had to be running around implementing the 10.2 rule as everyone fought until the very end.
The first four seeds, Mark Heidenfeld, Mark Quinn, Colm Daly and DU's Karl McPhillips we the only four to keep a full point count before the break after the first three rounds, with Mark Quinn playing Colm and Karl playing Mark Heidenfeld in round four. As it happened, having white brought no advantage in this round however, with Colm and Mark Heidenfeld victorious.
The decisive game on the tournament was played in round 5: Mark Heidenfeld against Colm Daly, where Colm had the upper hand, when he tactically outplayed his opponent. Colm left nothing to chance in round 6 then, when a victory against David Fitzsimons secured his the first place with an impressive full score. Mark Heidenfeld had to settle for the second place, with Ciaran Quinn coming third after beating Mark Quinn, and thus being responsible for the tournament's biggest upset.
Colm Daly was kind enough to send us two of his games with annotations: you can replay the round 4 game against Mark Quinn as well as the round 5 game against Mark Heidenfeld.
We were pleased to get queries about next year—and yes, we are hoping to turn this into an annual event!
The event was kindly sponsored by Bank of Ireland, and the Leinster Chess Union.