Junior Chess

Underage/Schools Chess Provincial and All Ireland competitions are held annually.

Glorney and Faber Cups

In 1948 a Dublin businessman Cecil Parker Glorney and competitive chess player and President of Rathmines Chess Club, created the Glorney Cup. It was joined twenty years later by the Faber Cup. These two events have been held annually and bring together national squads from across Europe (although it is mainly just between teams from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England) for three days of intensive and extremely competitive chess. This year, under 12 and under 14 teams competed alongside their older compatriots. Held this year at Dublin City University and organised by the Irish Chess Union.The 2008 Glorney and Faber Cups were held in Liverpool as part of its City of Culture celebrations.

Team Competitions

Leinster Chess Union run chess leagues, there are six divisions, a number of them named after significant figures in Irish Chess. The Armstrong Cup is probably the oldest perpetual chess trophy in the world played continually since 1888.

• Division 1 - Armstrong Cup
• Division 2 - Heidenfeld Trophy
• Division 3 - Ennis Shield
• Division 4 - O'Hanlon Cup
• Division 5 - BEA Cup
• Division 6 - Bodley Cup

The Leinster Chess Union also runs a knockout team competition after the team league competitions have finished, the Brannigan Cup, for players from division one and two and Kinane Shield.

The Ulster Chess Union run a number of team league competitions in Ulster for teams mainly in the Belfast area. The Belfast and District Leagues Division One play for the Ulster Trophy/Silver King, which has been played for since 1893. The all-ulster league competition usually played in a variety of formats over the years so as to include sides from the rest of the province.

In Munster there are three divisions run annually for which club sides in Cork, Limerick, Ennis, Shannon, Tralee, Dungarvin compete

Competitions

Competitions are held through out the year mostly run by individual clubs or by provincial Unions such as the City of Dublin, Cork Congress (Mulcahy Cup), Bunratty, Limerick Open, Galway Congress, Drogheda, Malahide, Bray, Kilkenny Congress, Ulster and Leinster Championships.

A number of significant tournaments have been held in the the past

• 2005 European Union Chess Championship, Cork
• 1993 Dublin FIDE Zonal
• 1991 Telecom Éireann International, Dublin
• 1988 CIMA Dublin Millennium Chess Congress
• 1979 O'Hanlon Memorial (ICU Golden Jubilee), Dublin
• 1957 Dublin Zonal
• 1957 An Tostal, Dublin
• 1956 An Tostal, Dublin
• 1955 An Tostal, Cork
• 1954 An Tostal, Dublin
• 1951 Clontarf International, Dublin
• 1932 Tailteann Games, Dublin
• 1928 Tailteann Games, Dublin
• 1924 Tailteann Games, Dublin
• 1892 North of Ireland Congress, Belfast
• 1865 Dublin Masters

Irish Chess Journal

The ICU had published magazines in the past such as the Irish Chess Journal for members of the association, in recent years to reduce costs this has been curtailed since 2007 to a biannual online magazine. Junior Chess Corner was a magazine/ezine produced in 2007 by the ICU aimed at juniors and beginners. There have been a number of incarnations of the official magazine from the ICU, such as

Irish Chess Union

The Irish Chess Union (ICU) was formed in 1912, is the governing body for chess in Ireland and a member of FIDE since 1933 and the European Chess Union. The ICU promotes Chess in Ireland, maintains the chess rating for players in Ireland which are published three times a year and runs competitions such as the Irish Chess Championship, and selects teams to participate in International Competitions for Ireland.Before the establishment of the ICU there was chess competitions in Ireland run under organisations named The Irish Chess Association which had been formed in 1885 and the Hibernia Chess Association, or indeed run by various chess clubs. The Armstrong Cup is the oldest Irish team league competition and has been played every year since 1888 perhaps giving it the a claim on the longest running chess competition in the world.
While chess in Ireland has been concentrated around the big cities of Dublin, Belfast and Cork, there are a number of clubs throughout the country such as Derry, Drogheda, Ennis, Galway, Killkenny, Portadown, Wicklow to name a few. There are leagues held in the provinces and the winning teams (and runners up) playing off in the National Club Championships (although in recent years the Ulster leagues have not participated), with the winning team (and runners up) being entered into the European Club Championships.

Challenger Match

The Challenger Match will be an eight game match between Topalov and Kamsky. It will be played in Sofia, Bulgaria, between 16 and 28 February, 2009. The winner of the Challenger Match will be the challenger for the world championship in a match against Anand in 2009.

After Kamsky won the World Cup, there was ongoing uncertainty about the place of the Challenger match. Topalov prefered his home country of Bulgaria, while Kamsky wanted to play in a neutral country, and his manager has organized a bid from Lviv, Ukraine. FIDE awarded the match Bulgaria in February 2008, to Ukraine in June 2008, then back to Bulgaria in November 2008 because of problems with finances from Ukraine. Kamsky got a new manager, and met with FIDE and Topalov representatives during the Chess Olympiad, and on November 19 2008 FIDE announced that the players had agreed to play in Bulgaria, despite Kamsky's preference to play elsewhere. The match was originally scheduled for November 2008, but the late change to Bulgaria forced the match to be rescheduled for February 2009.

The defender

The defending champion is Viswanathan Anand, who won the World Chess Championship 2007 (a tournament with eight players) and defended the title in the World Chess Championship 2008 (a match against former champion Vladimir Kramnik).

The challenger
Further information: World Chess Championship 2006 and Chess World Cup 2007
The challenger to the title will be determined in a match between former FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov and the winner of the Chess World Cup 2007, Gata Kamsky. Veselin Topalov has been given direct entry to a "Challenger Match" against Kamsky. The reason lies in the complications in reunifying the world title in 2006. The chess world title was split between 1993 and 2006. In early 2006, FIDE had already announced the conditions for the World Chess Championship 2007: an eight-player tournament which included FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov, but not "Classical" World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. FIDE later organized a re-unification match between Kramnik and Topalov (the World Chess Championship 2006), with Kramnik to take Topalov's place in the 2007 tournament if he was to win the match. Kramnik did win the match and the reunified World Chess Championship, and so Topalov was excluded from the 2007 World Championship.In June 2007 FIDE announced that Topalov would be compensated by getting special privileges in the 2009 qualifying cycle: direct entry to a Challenger Match