Just a quick update on the progress of the Inaugural Irish Individual Knockout Championship on Funbridge.
From an original entry of 113, we’ve reached the last 32 stage. Three of our seeds have survived, but Joan Kenny lost narrowly (6-0) to Thomas MacCormac in a battle of the Grand Masters. So chalk up €100 as a bounty to Thomas, who intriguingly has drawn his US-based mentor, Jade Barrett, in the next round. This is a very high-quality field, and those who make the business end of the competition will deserve their prizes. By way of example, Grand Master Lucy Phelan lost out to recent Beat The Star volunteer Conor Boland from the Irish Open team in an early round.
The most nail-biting progress to the last 32 belongs to Tom Craig, who tied his first match but won on countback (in the case of a tie, the person who finished the boards first is deemed the winner – Dolores Gilliland also progressed over her sometime partner Maria Whelan in the first round by the same route) and then won his second match by the narrow margin of 3-1. Tom totalled 9 IMPs in his first two matches; by way of contrast Jeannie Fitzgerald amassed 102 IMPs on her way to the last 32, where she has a very interesting match-up against fellow international Marcin Rudzinski. Another match to watch in this round is that between Grand Master and Funbridge devotee Peter Goodman and junior international and rising star Matthew O’Farrell.
The Funbridge seeding programme seems to have malfunctioned a little, as Tom Hanlon and Paul Delaney are scheduled to meet in the last 16 round rather than the semi-final as should have been the case, unfortunately eliminating one of the bounty prizes, assuming they both make it that far. With Conor Boland and Northern Ireland international Wayne Somerville, plus Fitzgerald or Rudzinksi and Goodman or O’Farrell also in that half of the draw, it’s going to be very keenly contested.
We’ll update again in a few days when the competition has progressed a bit further. And we’d welcome any feedback from anyone who played in the competition, for future reference, and on the Funbridge platform generally. If a participant wants masterpoints, or prizes if relevant, and hasn’t identified themselves by name on Funbridge, please let us know your identity, privately if you wish.