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The 2007 Irish Open Championships are being held in the Royal Dublin Hotel during the first week of July. The event has attracted substantial sponsorship from Island Oil & Gas plc and participation is open to all. The most significant feature of this event is that the highest placed Irish player will be declared Irish champion. This new Open event has already attracted such players as GMs Nick Pert, Mark Hebden, Eduardas Rozentalis, Stuart Conquest and our best Irish hope for a tournament winner IM Brian Kelly . So it should be a very competitive and exciting affair indeed. A program with information on the full list of events is below.
The top seed and one of the main favourites is GM Eduardas Rozentalis, a very successful and experienced player who has won many international events and represented Lithuania at many Olympiads. An original player who is something of a specialist in offbeat variations. The other hot favourite has got to be English GM Stuart Conquest who is also a well travelled international with considerable success over many years. He has also represented England at many Olympiads. He is well known for his creative and attacking style. One of the new and rising stars of English chess and a relative newcomer to the English national team is GM Nick Pert who played in his first Olympiad in Turin 2006. No doubt he will be hungry for even more success with this event and if I were a betting man would make him my top tip to win the tournament. Last but by no means least of the star GM contingent is well known GM Mark Hebden who is no stranger to Irish chess and has been a regular visitor for many years. His extensive international experience including several caps for the English national team and dogged determination to play all out for wins will doubtless see him hard to stop. A big bonus is the late entry of our only GM norm hunter Brian Kelly , who with a good run of form could go all the way and win the tournament? Either way he will be a mighty hard player to beat so it should be interesting to see how the GM players tackle him? While it is highly unlikely that the winner of the tournament will emerge from outside of the top five seeds, it would perhaps be foolish to entirely rule out the likes of our 2300 plus group of Stephen Brady, Gavin Wall, Phillip Short , Stephen Jessel or dare I say it, Colm Daly as potential surprise victors. In any event, they are surely the only real Irish contenders for the top honours after Brian Kelly , and will at least be dangerous throughout the tournament. The rest of the field nevetheless still contains enough ambition and experience in the form of young rising players like David Fitzsimons , Simon Jeffares and Ryan Rhys Griffiths , both of whom have been making great advances of late. While spearheading the old guard with plenty of experience and being an ever present danger are the likes of IM Mark Orr and ex Irish Champion Eamon Keogh, either of whom are more than capable of creating all sorts of problems. | ||||||||||
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