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Three Irish teams at the World Seniors in Albania

 

This is a page for news about Irish players who are 50 years of age or older.

We also invite you to read our main Irish news page and international Seniors news and Seniors calendar pages.

 

Ireland has sent three teams of four players to compete at the World Senior Team Championships, to be played in Durres, Albania, starting today.

You will be able to follow their progress here and can follow how the tournaments progress on our dedicated news page for the event, linked above.

We have two teams in the 65+ section and one in the 50+ tournament although only three players aged under 65 were available to travel.

In the first round, our 65+ first team play the sixth seeds, France-1, while the second team play the Russian women who will compete under the FIDE flag. There is a good chance that the games from these matches will be broadcast online.

The 50+ team are paired with a German club, Bielefeld, in round one.

Jim Murray, a veteran of these events since 2016, kindly agreed to play on and captain the 50+ team so that others would not be disappointed. These are Gerard McIlroy, Vjekoslav ("Hector") Novak and Joseph A. McDonnell.

The Ireland-1 team in the 65+ section has former British Senior Champion FM Andrew P. Smith on top board. The current Irish 65+ champion Joe Noone is on board 2, CM Gerard MacElligott (captain and head of delegation) plays board 3 and Michael Gaffney is board 4.

This team is respectably seeded 33 (provisionally) out of 54 teams. That means that in the first round they will surely get a very tough opponent, likely to be France or Isdrael, after which they should soon find their level.

The Ireland-2 team is provisionally seeded 49th. The players are Bernard Boyle, Martin Wallace (captain), Brian Moore and Noel Quinn. If the seedings do not change after the final team declarations are made, then Ireland-2 will meet the formidable "FIDE" (i.e., Russian) women's team.

Good luck to all our players!

Details of the European Senior Team Championships, to be held in Crete in late August and early September, can now be found on our Seniors calendar page. So again please contact Gerry if you are interested (or respond in the Seniors Whatsapp group that he runs). Composition of our teams for Crete will be decided soon after the Albanian tournament in order for players to book flights etc. The closing date to enter teams is in mid-June.

Some Irish seniors are also entered for the congress in Bruges (August) and will probably fly the flag at various events later in the year in Spain. For details of these see our seniors calendar.

The organisers of the Kilkenny Chess Congress (20-22 November) have announced that the FIDE-rated Seniors event they began in 2025 will be repeated, but as an event for players aged 60+ this time. The venue will be the Club House Hotel.

 

See our Senior calendar for more details of events for the over-50s and our seniors news page for more information about tournaments for the over-50s.