Sam E. Collins (born 5 September 1982) is an Irish

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

player. He was awarded the title

International Master FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and ...

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( , ), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national chess federations and acts as the Spor ...

in 2004.

Junior career

Born in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

, Collins' career began while a student in

Gonzaga College Gonzaga College SJ is a voluntary Catholic boys' secondary school in Ranelagh, Dublin, Ireland. Founded in 1950, Gonzaga College is under the trusteeship of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit Order), one of five Jesuit secondary schools in Ir ...

, a school with a strong chess tradition. During his time at Gonzaga, he led the school to its second Millfield International chess tournament, which was considered the de facto Britain and Ireland schools' championships. Collins was named outstanding player of the tournament, an award previously won by such masters as Mark Quinn, Brian Kelly, Mark Ferguson and Michael Adams. Individually, Collins represented his country in both junior competition – the Glorney Cup – and the

Chess Olympiad The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in FIDE Onli ...

– at the time, the youngest Irishman to do so.

Senior career

Collins represented Ireland at every

Olympiad An olympiad (, ''Olympiás'') is a period of four years, particularly those associated with the Ancient Olympic Games, ancient and Olympic Games, modern Olympic Games. Although the ancient Olympics were established during Archaic Greece, Greece ...

between 2000 and 2014, playing on the first board in both 2010 and 2012. In the 2002 edition, held in

Bled Bled (; ,''Leksikon občin kraljestev in dežel zastopanih v državnem zboru,'' vol. 6: ''Kranjsko''. 1906. Vienna: C. Kr. Dvorna in Državna Tiskarna, p. 146. in older sources also ''Feldes'') is a town on Lake Bled in the Upper Carniolan regio ...

, Slovenia, he won the gold medal for second reserve, scoring 7½/8 points. In the 2004 Olympiad, in

Calvià Calvià () is a municipality on the island of Majorca, part of the Spanish autonomous community of the Balearic Islands. It is located in the southwestern part of the island of Majorca, between the Serra de Tramuntana and the Serra de Na Burgue ...

, Spain, he achieved the title of International Master (IM). Collins has achieved three norms required for the title of Grandmaster, won in 2008, 2010, and 2018 respectively. His peak FIDE rating of 2495 is the highest achieved by an Irish-born player. Collins has won the Irish Chess Championship twice, in 2002 and in 2014, and the Japanese Chess Championship once in 2009. Among his best one off results are his draw with

Alexander Grischuk Alexander Igorevich Grischuk (born October 31, 1983) is a Russian chess grandmaster. Grischuk was the Russian champion in 2009. He is also a three-time world blitz chess champion (in 2006, 2012 and 2015). He has competed in five Candidates To ...

in the 2010 Olympiad and his defeat of

Viktor Korchnoi Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi (, ; 23 March 1931 – 6 June 2016) was a Soviet (before 1976) and Swiss (after 1980) chess grandmaster (GM) and chess writer. He is considered one of the strongest players never to have become World Chess Champion. Bor ...

in 2011. Collins currently plays out of the Gonzaga Chess Club, whose first team includes French Grandmaster Sebastien Mazé and Irish internationals Stephen Jessel and Conor O'Donnell. With Collins rotating with Mazé on the top board, the club won the 2015, 2016, and 2017 editions of the Armstrong Cup. Internationally, Collins is perhaps best known as an author of chess books and DVDs. He has also taught at the Berkeley Chess School.

Personal life

Following school, Collins studied for a degree in law at

University College Dublin University College Dublin (), commonly referred to as UCD, is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland. With 38,417 students, it is Ireland's largest ...

, before being called to the bar. He holds an

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

from the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

and currently practises as a barrister in Dublin.

Publications

* ''Ruy Lopez: Attacking with the Schliemann'' by Sam Collins, Chessbase (PC-DVD), 2015. * ''Karpov: Move by Move'' by Sam Collins, Everyman Chess, 2015. * ''The Tarrasch: Move by Move'' by Sam Collins, Everyman Chess, 2014. * ''Chess explained: The c3 Sicilian'' by Sam Collins, Gambit Publications, 2007. * ''An attacking repertoire for White'' by Sam Collins, Batsford, 2005. * ''The French Advance'' by Sam Collins, Everyman Chess, 2006. * ''The King's Indian Defence: Move by Move'' by Sam Collins, Everyman Chess, 2017. * ''Understanding the Chess Openings'' by Sam Collins, Gambit Publications, 2021.

References

External links

* *
Sam Sr Collins
chess games at 365Chess.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Collins, Sam 1982 births Living people Chess International Masters Irish chess players Chess Olympiad competitors Irish chess writers Chess players from Dublin (city) Alumni of University College Dublin People educated at Gonzaga College Irish barristers 21st-century Irish lawyers Alumni of the University of London