As for women on bicycles in Limerick, surely you know; a woman on a bicycle is the perfect meeting of form and function, a beautiful sight for all. The correct first step for the sensible visitor is probably a backwards one.

Meanwhile, I had a win and a draw in team matches this weekend, extending my unbeaten run to ten games.

Great to hear. Not long ago you were a bit despairing of OTB play. Any French games to share?

Crunch.

I eventually won this.

Those lines with ...c6 are also playable, but I currently think black can try for more.

Then again, I won my last four games with black, so maybe I'm doing something right.

Ah, he means Thor.

I am interested in all answers, good, bad, indifferent, so any visitor here, feel free to reply.

I have no idea why he threw in the torch. Did it mean leaving himself in darkness? How long would a burning torch last?

"My opponent played the Berlin Wall, and thoroughly immured me".

Bill Wall
Gavin Wall
James Mason
Hans Berliner

I haven't read it or seen it on stage, but seemingly it's based on his Sunday strolls with James Joyce.

"Michael Adams was on awesome form in Kilkenny. He conceded one draw but dashed through the rest of the games without breaking sweat. Perhaps we should ask what a player who is nudging at the world's top ten is doing playing in a weekender in the middle of Ireland? That's down to the warmth of the welcome from the Kilkenny Chess Club. I would thoroughly recommend the tournament to anyone who would enjoy a good sociable weekend in pleasant surroundings. See you at the Club House Hotel in Kilkenny same time next year. "

I have also played chess matches against the Kilkenny club, one of the stronger clubs in Ireland.

The game was in the balance for 40+ moves but I eventually lost.

I love the way that is phrased...

I won a game yesterday with the Neo-Lisitsyn Gambit, 1.Nf3 f5 2.d3 etc. My opponent had a higher rating than me, but wasn't familiar with the line -- effectively suicide after 1...f5. He then walked into a line in which I'd played about 20 rapid games in recent times: he took 2 hours for the game, I took 20 mins -- and could have played the same moves in 5 mins but I didn't want to seem too arrogant. I won in 23 moves.

<Not that it matters much, but this is a site about Irish chess history and my name change will confuse anyone looking at old tournament results, so here’s what happened. My name is Mel Ó Cinnéide, and always has been — it’s what’s on my birth cert, passport etc. As a kid I often called myself Mel Kennedy, and that’s the name I used when I first played competitive chess. A few years living in the Netherlands in the late 1980s convinced me that using two names was a bad idea, and it also meant that my Irish and FIDE chess ratings were under different names! So sometime in the early 1990s I bit the bullet and started using my proper name in the Irish chess world as well.>

<The 1990 Mulcahy produced an unexpected winner when a computer, the ‘Mephisto Almeria’, owned by John Kissane, swept the board and finished on 5.5 points out of six games and managed to outscore the 75 human opponents who participated that year. It was previously decided that in the ‘unlikely event’ of the computer finishing in the prizes then no prize would be awarded to it, consequently the magnificent trophy and £700 in prizemoney was awarded to London based Connor O’Shaughnessy and Mel Kennedy who both finished in second place on 5/6.>

See something that violates our rules? Blow the whistle and inform a moderator.