Congratulations to Anvita Nair pictured below, one of the club’s youngest players, who was amongst the prizes at a junior Chess Tournament held recently in the Le Cheile Community & Youth Centre in Donnycarney.

An event for teams of primary school children was held in St Conleths College on Saturday 10th May. It was a six-round Swiss event for teams of 4 primary school children run by Grandmaster Alexander Baburin. There were 14 teams entered including two from the club, the Elm Mount Kings and Elm Mount Knights.

The Elm Mount Kings finished runner-up on tie break from the Chess Kings with both teams finishing on an unbeaten score of 5.5/6 having drawn their individual match.

The team is pictured below with Grandmaster Alexander Baburin at the prize-giving, from left Allen Shema Gasore, Thomas Syms, Conal O’ Mahoney and Eric Yuze Lin. Conal and Eric also both received board prizes for their high scores on their boards (scores of 5/6 and 6/6 respectively). 

Ewan Henderson, who played on the Elm Mount Knights team, won a board prize for a score of 5/6 on board one. The club’s youngest competitors in the event, Anvita Nair and Adam Fennell, both aged 7, also acquitted themselves well on the Knights team against more experienced older players. Pictured below (right from foreground back) are Adam Fennell, Anvita Nair and Ewan Henderson. Ewan is also pictured with grandmaster Alexander Baburin at the prize-giving ceremony.

The 2024/25 Leinster League season finished on Sunday 27th April when the final round for the top four divisions was played in ALSAA. Elm Mount had 6 teams competing in 5 divisions and at the end of the season, all the teams had maintained their status – although none were promoted, none were relegated!

In the Armstrong Cup (div 1), Elm Mount went into the final round in 11th place, needing a 5-3 win against relegation rivals Gorey to be sure of staying up. In the event, Elm Mount won 6½-1½ and ended up in 7th place with 39/88. The top scorers for the team were David Fitzsimons, Gerard MacElligott and Gavin Melaugh who each scored 5½ points,

Elm Mount finished in a comfortable 4th place in the Heidenfeld Trophy (div 2) with a score of 45/88, just 2½ points behind the team in 2nd place. The top scorer on the team was Harry Braine who was awarded a board prize for an outstanding score of 9½/10.

After a slow start, losing the first 5 matches, Elm Mount recovered strongly to finish in 6th place in the O’Hanlon Cup (div 4) with a score of 33/66. The top scorer on the team was Thomas Syms who scored 5 points.

Elm Mount had two teams in the British Airways Cup North (div 5). The Elm Mount A team finished in 5th place with 27/55. The top scorer for the A team was David Lynch who scored 6½/11. The Elm Mount B team finished in 7th place with 25/55. The top scorer for the B team was Eavan Gleeson who scored 6 points.

Elm Mount’s team in the Bodley Cup North (div 6) had a tough year, finishing at the bottom in 9th place, but the team did manage to draw matches against some of their opponents. The top scorer on the team was Eric Yuze Lin who scored 3 points.

The complete results can be seen at the Leinster Chess Union site.

The Club’s Annual Christmas Blitz took place on Monday 16th December 2024 and attracted an entry of 27.

The players were divided into 4 all play all groups, Sections A to D, which were won by David Fitzsimons, Alan MacDonagh, Peter Scott and Eric Yuze Lin respectively.

The other prize winners were Gavin Melaugh and Fred Armstrong in Section A, Bernard Boyle and Thomas Syms in Section B, Shaurya Dash and Nicu Boldijar in Section C and Cormac McCarthy in Section D.

The photos of the prize winners with Club Secretary Pat Fitzsimons are set out below along with the crosstables containing the results of each section. As the winner of Section A, with a perfect score of 7/7, David Fitzsimons is the club’s blitz champion for 2024. It is also noteworthy that some of the club’s younger members (Thomas, Shaurya and Eric) were among the prize-winners.

The cross-tables are below:-

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

Congratulations to David Fitzsimons IM who is the new Irish Chess Champion for 2024 after scoring an unbeaten 7.5/9 in the Irish Championship to finish a clear half point ahead of the 2023 champion Alex Baburin GM.

David is pictured below with the Irish Championship perpetual trophy.

The full tournament cross-table can be seen at the Chess-Results website.

Well done, David!

The semi-finals and finals of the 3 Leinster Cup competitions were held on Saturday 27th July in St. Patrick’s National School in Skerries. Elm Mount teams had qualified for the semi-finals of both the Branagan Cup and Willie Brennan cup.

Elm Mount won the Branagan Cup, beating Dún Laoghaire 3½-2½ in the semi-final and then defeating Gonzaga by the same score in the final.

Elm Mount finished as runners-up in the Willie Brennan Cup, beating Naomh Barróg in the semi-final before losing narrowly 2½-3½ to Lucan in the final.

The Branagan team are shown below:-

From left, Igor Marcondes, Bernard Boyle,  Gerard MacElligott, Shane Melaugh, Pat Fitzsimons, Fred Armstrong and Ciaran Quinn.

The Willie Brennan team are pictured below with their trophies:-
From left, Eugene McMorrow, Thomas Syms, Jack Herring and Patrick O’Tierney.

Congratulations to Kevin Huang, who finished in joint 2nd place with an unbeaten 5/6 in a field of 59 players in the Murray Challengers tournament in Drogheda recently. Kevin is pictured below receiving his prize:-

Well done! The full tournament results are here.

Elm Mount have won the Irish National Club Championship for the first time!

The event was held at the Talbot Hotel in Stillorgan over the weekend of April 26th-28th. Fifteen teams took part and the competition was organized as a 5-round Swiss system, with teams getting 2 points for winning a match and 1 point for a 3-3 draw, and with 6-player teams being selected from a panel of 8.

The 8 players who played for Elm Mount were Alvaro Bayo, Shane Melaugh, Igor Marcondes, Ciaran Quinn, Kim Garcia De Souza, Harry Braine, Fred Armstrong and Thomas Syms.

The team started off with a narrow 3½ – 2½ loss to Galway on Friday evening. but bounced back with 2 clear wins on Saturday, beating Bray-Greystones 6-0  and Blanchardsown 4½ – 1½. A narrow 3½ – 2½ win against Master Chess Club on Sunday morning brought the team up to 2nd place behind Malahide who had won 3 matches and drawn the other. Elm Mount narrowly beat St. Benildus 3½ – 2½ in the last round while Malahide lost by the same score to Ennis.

The final result was that Elm Mount, Galway and Ennis all finished on 8 match points out of a possible 10, but Elm Mount took first place by virtue of scoring more points in the individual games.

Full details of the event can be found here.

The picture below shows some of the team playing:-

The result means that Elm Mount have qualified to play in the European Club Championship later this year.