The first qualifying round for this year’s Top 8 tournament will be played next Wednesday, January 13th, at 8pm in the Ireland room on KGS. With fourteen candidates contending for the four open places in the Top 8, perhaps the largest field the tournament has ever seen, there will be two qualifying rounds, the second to be played on January 20th.

The pairings for the first round are (winners in red):

A: Cian Synnott (emauton) vs. John Gibson (ishidaogo)
B: Stephen Flinter vs. Chris Rafferty (pywackett)
C: John Courtney (JohnCourtn) vs. (shinuito)
D: Piotr Gawron (pgaw) vs. Niall Tuohy (niallgo) [rescheduled for Saturday, January 9th, 6pm]
E: Peter Kasko (sutex) vs. John Doyle (signius)
F: Tom Shanahan (seanachain) vs. Ruari McCloskey (ranoar)

Bye: Roman Pszonka, Ian Davis.

I hope to see you all there to cheer on the candidates.