Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts

Tuesday 19 December 2017

Game of the year

After an extended break, my blog returns with an award for game of the year. There is little doubt that this was Nashlen Govindasamy's game against visiting GM Sahaj Grover, played in round 3 of the South African Open, on 15 July 2017. The game was broadcast live and attracted considerable interest, mainly because of some brilliant sacrifices, and the feeling that Nashlen was beating the GM. You can download the game here with brief notes by myself.


Nashlen could not have expected the GM to go pawn grabbing on move 7, which makes the Rook sacrifice (diagram above) on move 15 absolutely brilliant. He must have found 15.Rfb1!! over the board, rather than preparing it at home, as a similar sacrifice has only been played once before in a master game. By move 19 all the engines concur - Black is dead lost! I'm not sure why Nashlen spent so much time on his 19th move (nearly 34 minutes) as he dearly needed that time later in the game. On move 20 he consumed another 23 minutes, leaving him just 11 minutes plus increments to make the time control. All went well until move 27, when White missed two easy wins, then tragically blundered on move 28 with less than a minute left on the clock. This could have been the game of Nashlen's life, but alas it was not to be. It is hard to defeat a GM!

Wednesday 10 May 2017

Recent results/photos

I've got several recent tournaments to report on. The first event was the annual KZN open, organised this year by Erick Takawira, president of the KZN Chess Association. The KZN open was held at Northlands Primary School from 27th to 30th April 2017.

The A section was FIDE rated and was won by Joseph Mwale. Joseph started out like a house on fire with 6 wins, clinching the title with a round to spare. The key game was against IM Mabusela in round 5, when Mabu blundered a piece against him. Joseph lost in the last round to second placed Brighton Mthunzi, who was joined on the same score by the leader of the Hyenas pack, Stephen Skosana. I have posted all the games (in PGN) onto chess-results.com and you can also find all the usual statistics there.

The B section was limited to players rated below 1500. Sizwe Ndlovu was a convincing winner, and I don't think he will be rated below 1500 for much longer!

On Saturday 29th, in the afternoon, a keen field of 70 players tried their luck at blitz chess (5 minutes each). Here are detailed results of the KZN blitz championship. As can be seen, Joseph Mwale scored a full house 9 out of 9. He was dead lost - on the board - in at least 3 of his games, but Joseph treats the clock like an extra piece, and won all his "lost" games on time. Second place was shared by 4 players, namely Lindokuhle Xulu, Tshediso Mpya, Wandamuzi Khanyile and Charles Pwere.

There were two rapid tournaments held in KZN on Saturday 6th May 2017. The first of these was the Durban High School rapid cup, which was won jointly by Jason Subke and Sayen Naidu. Here are the detailed results of the DHS rapid cup.

The second rapid, played in the Saint Lucia town hall, was the stronger event, with 3 KZN champions in the field. It was won by Erick Takawira, ahead of Joseph Mwale and Wanda Khanyile (Wanda held Joseph to a draw, but lost to Erick). Here are the summary results from the St Lucia event.

My thanks to Sandile Ngcongo, who organised the Saint Lucia event, for the following photos:

Players at the Saint Lucia rapid

Erick Takawira

Joseph Mwale

Sizwe Ndlovu

Erick with Sandile Ngcongo

Wednesday 29 March 2017

Ethekwini Open report

The 2017 Ethekwini Open was the biggest event of this year's chess calendar in Durban, with a very strong FIDE section and a well attended open section. It took place over 4 days, from 18th to 21st March 2017, with just 2 rounds being played per day. Special guests were GM Sipke Ernst from the Netherlands and IA Chanda Nsakanya from Zambia.

The open section attracted 125 entries and was intended for players rated below 1900. It was played at 90 minutes per player for the game. The top two seeds were Jason Subke (1862) and Clive Mthunzi (1831) and they both reached 4 out of 4 with little trouble. However, Jason could only draw with Mpho Mshope in round 5, so he was half a point behind when the top two duly met in round 6. A tough positional game saw Jason a pawn down in a Rook and pawn ending as time ran short -
Subke vs Mthunzi, Black to move
and this is how the game ended: 1...Re4+ 2.Kd3 Re1 3.Rxd5! (after a long think, he had to see his 6th move here, if 3.Kd2 Re7 4.Rxd5 Kg8 is slightly better for Black) 3...Rd1+ 4.Ke4 Rxd5 5.Kxd5 Kf6 6.h6! (the only move) and the players agreed a draw. They both won in the 7th round, so the final placings were 1st Clive Mthunzi on 6.5, with a 3-way tie for 2nd place between Jason Subke, Ayanda Gumede and Mpho Mashope on 6 points from 7 games.
Clive Mthunzi with Sayen Naidu
Jason Subke with Sayen Naidu

Prizes for the open section were presented by Sayen Naidu, a former winner of the tournament in 2008. Here are the full results of the open section.

The FIDE section was very interesting, with 7 titled players competing. Obviously grandmaster Sipke Ernst was the favourite to win, but who would finish second, and who could take a draw from him? The standard FIDE time control of 90 minutes plus 30 seconds increment was used, but Sipke played very fast and had all his opponents under pressure. I was very impressed by his willingness to discuss his games and explain his moves afterwards.

All of the games in the FIDE section - 97 games (PGN) - were captured by me, so you can replay the moves at your leisure. I will just highlight some of the moments from Sipke's games:
Johannes Mabusela played 8.b4 here vs Sipke Ernst
"Where did I go wrong?" asked a baffled Mabu. Apparently 8.b4 was incorrect for 2 reasons, the first is that White has nowhere to castle, as the Q-side has big holes and the K-side lacks defenders, the second reason is that the c4 square becomes weak. The game is very instructive.

The closest anybody came to a draw against him was in round 6. It looked like Corno was better for much of the game, and this was the critical moment when the endgame was lost:
Corno Klaver vs Sipke Ernst, White to play
White could sit tight here, with a probable draw, but saw a little combination: 43.c5 Rxc5 44.Rxc5 dxc5 45.Bxf7, which was immediately refuted by 45...Kxf7 46.Kxe5 c4!. The GM knew that the pawn ending was a win for him, as he recognised the 3-2 pattern on the Q-side. Lesser mortals have to calculate the variations!

The most brilliant game of the tournament was unquestionably Sipke's win against Joseph. Here is the game with some variations added with the help of my favourite chess engine!
The start of round 5, Sipke Ernst vs Joseph Mwale
Here are the final results of the FIDE section and some photos supplied by the chief organiser, Erick Takawira, who did a lot of hard work behind the scenes.

Adrian Chappell 3rd place with 5/7 was a surprise

WIM Jesse February with WCM Karmishta Moodley

GM Sipke Ernst with IA Chanda Nsakanya

The Ethekwini Open floating trophy

Saturday 31 December 2016

SAJCC 2016

The annual chess extravaganza known as the SAJCC took place this year from the 15th to the 23rd of December, at Birchwood Conference Centre in Boksburg. If I'm not mistaken, 260 teams took part, which is apparently a new record, with close to 2,300 participants ranging from the under 8's to the under 20's. The numbers were so large that two playing halls had to be used, with about 800 players aged 16 to 20 in OR Tambo hall and 1,500 youngsters in the larger Terminal hall. The arbiting team worked from early on the 15th until 1 am on the morning of the 16th so that everything was ready for the opening ceremony a few hours later.

Chess SA president Eldo Smart opens the 2016 SAJCC in Terminal hall
Here is a summary of all the team results (docx format, 13 pages long) which was prepared by the arbiting team. It can be seen that gold medals in the Championship (A section) went to:

under 08 Western Province (Ethekwini 3rd),
under 10 Tshwane (Ethekwini 5th),
under 12 Western Province (Ethekwini 3rd),
under 14 Western Province (Ethekwini 2nd),
under 16 Ethekwini (WP 2nd, Joburg Metro 3rd, Tshwane 4th)
under 18 Western Province (Ethekwini 4th),
under 20 Tshwane (Ethekwini 5th).

The gold to Ethekwini in the under 16 division was the only blot on the Western Province and Tshwane clean sweep! This was an incredibly close division - 3 of the top 4 teams were equal on match points (they won 5 matches each) and, if this section had been decided on match points, then Johannesburg Metro would have been the winners, as they won all their matches. It all goes to show how important it is to have strength in depth, when game points are the key number.

Our gold medal team, from left: Anele Danisa, Mayilan Chetty, Kiashen Maharaj, Cayden Pather,
 Dayaan Parthiephal, Sachin Reddy, Zahra Kara, Cailin Chetty, Joseph Mwale (coach),
Chad Millard, Ayanda Gumede (manager), absent - Ananta Reddy.
The team event was followed by the Wild Card tournaments, for those players who had not already qualified for the Junior Closed in 2017. Notable KZN successes were:

under 12 1st Mayaskar Nair
under 14 2nd Abhay Prithipal
under 16 =3rd/14th Chad Millard, Lance Leslie-Smith, Cayden Pather
under 18 4th Shivar Gopaulsingh
under 20 1st Jivorn Reddy, 2nd Truwen Reddy

An Inter Regional team championship was held at the same time as the Wild Card event. It was won quite convincingly by the "A-team" from Tshwane. Sadly the Ethekwini team failed to perform, after being seeded 4th they ended up in a disappointing 15th place. I was an arbiter for this event and have now captured all 308 games (PGN) - there are some great games.

Tuesday 18 October 2016

SAPS championships

SAPS Chess Association held their annual championships from 6th to 14th October 2016, at Misty River, just south of Johannesburg. I was present as the arbiter and travelled to and from the venue with the KZN team. There were 10 teams of 10 players (6 male and 4 female), one from every province, plus a team from Head Office, so that a 9-round team round-robin could be played.

Marc Petersen plays Hlayisani Mthombeni in Western Cape vs Gauteng,
in the background is Lesiba Phahlane, gold medallist on board 1
It soon became evident that Gauteng (the defending champions) were the team to beat. Head Office came close to drawing their match, as did Western Cape, but in the end Gauteng emerged victorious in all of their matches. In second place was Eastern Cape, who relied on their ladies to win most of their matches!

Eastern Cape won the silver medals with Brian Salters on board 1, and
Rico Schutte on board 2, also seen is Cornelius Mojapelo (Limpopo)
KZN was the team with the lowest average rating, and were only able to draw one of their matches. Nevertheless, the team remained in good spirits, and won the prize for best team spirit. The match between KZN and Northern Cape was a real nail biting encounter, as the scores were level after 9 games had been completed, with just board 1 to decide the match. Both sides missed chances for a win and this exciting game is given below:


Before the team event, there was a 9-round individual championships, and a 7-round blitz championships, so a lot of chess was packed into the available days!

Leandra Ryneveldt won the prize for the biggest upset,
here she is playing Leonardina Mogongwa from Gauteng,
next to her is Devina Le Roux who scored 9/9 for her team




Here are the results files for each of the events:

Individual championships
all rounds detailed results
tiebreaks (all players)
tiebreaks (female only)

Blitz championships
all rounds blitz results

Team championships
summary by team
composition of team results
tiebreaks for board prizes

Lastly, here are the games that were entered for the best game prize, together with some brief annotations by myself.

Wednesday 7 September 2016

Ethekwini Open results

We must congratulate IM Johannes Mabusela on another success in KZN. This time he won the Ethekwini Open, held over the weekend of 3rd/4th September 2016.

Mabusela is congratulated by Mbongeni Sithole
Mabusela started off with a draw in round 1! Mlungisi Mbanjwa from Richards Bay proved a tough nut to crack, so Mabusela offered a draw with time running short. Thereafter, he followed up with 5 wins in a row. The only time that he was perhaps in trouble was in his 5th round game against 2nd seed Joseph Mwale. Here is the score of his 1st round game:


Thanks to Khetha Mngadi for posting this game and photo on Facebook.

Here are the results of section A and the results of section B.

Friday 15 July 2016

SA Schools Winter Games

Chess was one of the 9 sporting codes that took part in the "South African Schools National Winter Games Championships 2016" in Durban in July 2016. The other sporting codes were football, hockey, jukskei, kho-kho, netball, rugby, tennis and volleyball.

Chess was played from the 10th to 14th July at Glenwood High School. There were 9 provincial teams of 7 players in each of 6 age group sections i.e. a total of 378 chess players for all these groups. There were even larger numbers in other sporting codes. I have seen reports of 7 500 competitors, so this was a massive sporting event!

I thought that Ronald King did a great job as chief arbiter. The organising committee asked that the event be played as a combined team and individual event. For the first 5 rounds, the tournament was paired as a normal Swiss. Then for the last 4 rounds, players were not allowed to play against their team mates, as the organisers wanted to establish which province had the best team. They also wanted to know who were the best individual players. I didn't know that Swiss Manager could do this, but Ronald somehow managed the task after spending many hours on his computer!

For those interested in the results, here is a link to the final results of the under 13 boys section. From there you can browse to all the other age group results.

I was present at the chess as a talent scout, for the under 13 boys and girls. Originally there were supposed to have been 2 talent scouts, and it would have been a lot easier to pick 3 boys and 3 girls, rather than 5 of each, on my own. I was given until Wednesday afternoon to finalise my reports, which meant that I only had games from the first 6 rounds to consider. Talent identification is as much about future potential as it is about present ability, so I must now wait 3 years to see if I was any good at talent spotting!

The following tactical episode deserves its own diagram:

Fihla vs Mazibuko, round 3, under 13 boys
In this position Black could try 27... Rc8 28.Re1 Qc2 keeping everything under control, instead he played the tempting 27... Nc3 forking Queen and Rook. Imagine his shock when White replied with 28.Rxd6! Both major piece are untouchable because of the back row mate, so play continued 28... Ra8 29.Qc1 and now the incredible 29... Qxe3!! really impressed me. Since 30.Qxe3 Ra1+ results in mate, the game went 30.fxe3 Ne2+ 31.Kf2 Nxc1 and Black has regained the piece, as well as keeping his extra pawn. Unfortunately he blundered on move 40 and eventually lost the game.

PS. Here is my annotated games file (PGN, 87 games) from rounds 1 to 6 of the under 13 boys and girls sections, which has the games that were considered in talent identification.

Sunday 26 June 2016

KZN District championship

It was perhaps no surprise that Ethekwini won the inaugural KZN District championships, held over the weekend of 24th to 26th June 2016. Much more interesting was the battle for the silver medals, which was won by the Uthungulu district after narrow wins over their chief rivals from Amajuba, who took the bronze medals, and the Ilembe district, which finished in 4th place.

The full results have been published on the chess-results.com website, here is a link to the team results summary.

Here is a game with a very nice finish, sent to me by coach Spha from Ilembe:

Some photos from the prizegiving (more photos in a separate post):

Team Amajuba with their bronze medals, Gugu Mkhize centre front.
KZNCA chair Erick Takawira centre back. 

The top players on each board, most of them had blue Ethekwini shirts!

Monday 6 June 2016

Mabusela wins KZN open

DCC chairman Desmond Rooplal congratulates Mabusela on his victory
The 2016 KZN open was won by visiting IM Johannes Mabusela from Tshwane, with the fine score of 7½ points out of 8. In 2nd place was Wandumuzi Khanyile from Richards Bay, with 7 points. Here are the final results of the 2016 KZN open.

A more detailed report, including photos and some annotated games, can be found on the Durban Chess Club website. I have now captured the games played on the top 10 boards for viewers to download.

Tuesday 5 April 2016

Junior Closed, Bloemfontein

The annual SA Junior Closed Chess Championships took place at Eunice Girls High School in Bloemfontein this year. Their main hall was used for the older players, from under 14 to under 20, with an adjacent hall used for the younger players. I was present as the deputy chief arbiter and was responsible for the main hall, where the players behaved so well that the arbiters had little to do!

I even had time to watch some of the games ...
The event was well organised by Chess Free State, who found accommodation for their numerous visitors at the Wag n Bietjie hostel on the UVS campus. I traveled there with fellow arbiter Divesh Sookdeo and KZN coach Sayen Naidu on the 19th March and we returned to Durban on the 27th.

KZN was quite successful at the event. Prizes were given to:

Kaedan Govender - tied 2nd in under 8 boys with 8/11 (no photo).

Archana Datharam (on left) tied 2nd in under 8 girls with 8/11.
Her sister Aarti Datharam dominated the u10 girls, with 10 wins and a draw.
Charlotte Millard (on left) was 3rd in the under 10 girls.

Jaedon Naidu - tied 3rd in under 12 boys with 7/11 (no photo).

Our most successful age group was the under 14 boys, where Cailin Chetty won gold with 9/11, just half-a-point ahead of his rival Naseem Essa.


Naseem was leading until disaster struck on Thursday
The final KZN medallist came in the under 20 boys section, where Nashlen Govindasamy tied 1st with Roland Bezuidenhout on 9.5 points. Bezuidenhout won the gold on tiebreak.

Our top u20 player Nashlen Govindasamy
Games played on the top 10 boards for all the different age groups were captured and published on the chess-results.com website. However, the capturers gave up very quickly when they couldn't read the score sheets eg. Nashlen's score sheets seemed to give them a lot of trouble! I visited the games capturing room and was able to capture all the moves of every game played in the under 20 boys section for the first 10 rounds. I was not able to check the last round as I was busy with the play-offs. Anyway, here is a PGN file of all the games from the u20 boys section.

Tuesday 9 February 2016

Games from Cape Town

The SA Junior national team championships and wild card events took place from 4th to 10th January 2016. The organisers published PGN files of games for 21 selected events (7 team, 14 wild card) on the Chess-Results.com website.

Most of the games from the A section of the teams event were in the 7 PGN files that I collected. Where a game was missing, I have added in a blank game header with the published result. Note that the under 20 A section was played on DGT boards and these games were broadcast live on the Tshwane chess website and can be downloaded from there. My file contains the scores from the DGT file where these differed from those on the Chess-Results website.

Here is my PGN file for A sections of team event (1736 games/results).

For the wild card events, the organisers published 14 PGN files, basically the top 10 boards of each age group. There were numerous missing or unreadable scores. Where a game was missing, I have added in a blank game header with the published result. I have also added in all results for the top players who were selected for the forthcoming Junior Closed in March.

Here is my edited PGN file for all 14 wild card events (1136 games/results).


Saturday 23 January 2016

SA Inter Region champs

The South African Inter Regional team championships were held at the Sports Hall on the upper campus of the University of Cape Town, from 8th to 10th January 2016. This was at the same time and the same venue as the Junior Wild Card championships. A strong field of 21 teams of 4 players (plus optional reserve) entered the event. Among those playing were new SA champion, IM Daniel Cawdery, 3-times SA champions FM Nicholas van der Nat and IM Watu Kobese, FM Donovan van den Heever and IM Johannes Mabusela.
We travelled to the upper campus of UCT many times from the student residences
on the lower campus. Devils Peak and Rhodes memorial are in the background.
The championships turned into a two-horse race between Tshwane A and Western Province A. With both teams scoring 22 game points, the title went to Tshwane on match points.

Sadly, KZN could only find 3 players willing to take part in this event, namely Joseph Mwale, Lulama Qobo and Sachen Pather. They borrowed 2 Cape Town based players to make up an "Ethekwini" team. Joseph defeated the formidable Watu Kobese in 80 moves in a sensational first round upset, and he went on to win the board prize with his score of 5 out of 5 on board 1.

The top boards were broadcast live on the Tshwane Chess website and I found some other games on Facebook. After adding in the board numbers and ratings, here is a PGN file of all the games from this event (results given where game scores could not be found).

Saturday 17 October 2015

SA Club Teams results/games

No report was received from the organisers.

Here are the results of the A section and the results of the B section.

PS. I received a box of score sheets from the organisers and have captured all available games. PGN files are available here for all 168 games played in the A section, which was FIDE rated, and for 151 games played in the B section (many score sheets were missing).

Monday 27 July 2015

Mandela 67 results

Congratulations to Kela Kaulule Siame on winning the second Mandela 67 minutes chess tournament. He scored 6.5 points from his 7 games, with 6 wins and a draw against the defending champion, Joseph Mwale, in the 6th round. Mwale was part of a group of 4 players who tied for 2nd place with 6 points.

Top seed Johannes Mabusela drew in round 4 and blundered away a win in round 6 to end on only 5.5 points. Mabu was fortunate to survive his round 4 encounter with Durban's Lulama Qobo. In what was the most exciting game of the tournament, Lulama sacrificed a piece in the opening and Mabu was hard pressed to defend. At the end, Lulama decided to take a perpetual check, in a position where he had a forced win! Here is the game:


Here are the final results of the 2nd Mandela 67 chess tournament.

Saturday 9 May 2015

Mwale wins KZN Open

The Durban Chess Club once again organised the annual KZN Open Championship, from 25th to 27th April 2015. Joseph Mwale was a convincing winner of this year's event, starting with a blistering 7 wins before easing off with a draw in the last round. Along the way he defeated top seed Erick Takawira (a 4-times KZN champion) and 2nd seed Nashlen Govindasamy. Joseph played all his games at a fast pace, leaving his opponents struggling both with the clock and with the position on the board.

With over R15 000 in prize money, the organisers expected lots of entries, but the usual visitors from Johannesburg decided at the last minute to stay at home and play in the Orion series. The championships were contested in two sections, with section A open to all players, and section B restricted to junior players rated below 1400. The first three rounds were played at 60/60, and the remaining five rounds were at 90/90, with no increments, so there were a number of exciting time scrambles.

Joseph Mwale, winner of the A section
Shivar Gopaulsingh, SA under 16 champion, took a draw from Mwale
The only time that Mwale was in serious trouble was on the first day of the competition, especially in his round 2 game against Mndeni Njapha:


In round 5 Joseph and Nashlen had a very interesting game, with Nashlen down to his last 5 minutes by move 35. They reached this position after Black's 47th move, with Nashlen down to his last 30 seconds:


Joseph thought for a while, I was expecting 48.Kd1 or Kd2 winning, but then he played the unexpected 48.Qxf4. I'm not sure how to annotate the move, it killed the attack and gained some seconds, but a Queen sacrifice? Joseph won on time on move 56.

The critical game between Mwale and Erick Takawira took place in round 7:


Top seed Erick Takawira seemed to be out of practice. He was fortunate to survive in his round 5 game against young Duncan Podmore:


There were lots of interesting games played, here is a PGN file of all the games played on the top boards of the A section (62 games).


The B section was restricted to junior players (under 18) rated below 1400. Michael Fu was the winner, with 7 points from his 8 games. In second place was Anele Danisa, the son of leading KZN player Cyril Danisa.

Michael Fu, winner of the B section
Santham Moodley and Charlotte Millard
These are the final results of the A section and the final results of the B section.

Wednesday 25 March 2015

Autumn series 21-22 March

The Autumn series organised by Glenwood Chess Club was surprisingly won by the second seed, Lulama Qobo, with 4.5 points from his 5 games. Surprising, as he almost lost his first round game against Michael Fu, going 2 pawns down in a Queen and Rook ending. However, Fu blundered into a mate in one, after which Lulama never looked back.

The top seed, Joseph Mwale, had a moment of chess blindness in his round 3 game against Naseem Essa. This was the position, after about 20 moves, with Essa defending:

Joseph Mwale vs Naseem Essa
Play continued 1.Rxd8+ Rxd8 2.Nf6+ Bxf6 3.Rxf6 Rd1+ and now the appalling 4.Kf2?? lost to the skewer 4... Bh3 5.g4 Rf1+ 6.Kg3 Rxf6 7.Kxh3 Re6 8.Nf3 Qe7 and Black soon won. Either 4.Kg2 or 4.Rf1 gave White a small edge. In the post-mortem Joseph suggested 1.Rde1 and I liked 1.Rd3, in both cases 1... Bf5 can be met by 2.Nxf7 in White's favour.

The game of the tournament was undoubtedly Mwale vs Danisa, played in the last round. The tactical mastery shown by Joseph was extremely impressive:


Here are the final results of 2015 Autumn series.

Monday 9 February 2015

Games from Kimberley 2015

Capturing games at the SA Junior Chess Championships held in Kimberley in January 2015 was a mammoth task. In the end about 2700 games were captured - all the games from the Championship sections of the teams event (about 1700 games) plus selected games from the Wild Card and all the games from the Inter-Regional. The game capturers faced an unenviable job, since many players were unable to notate clearly throughout their games.

The organisers supplied PGN game files for each round on their website. These raw PGN files needed a lot of editing! After what seemed like weeks spent retyping player names (some names had 5 different spellings/variations), the next step was to find out and enter the age group sections (as these were omitted from the raw PGN file). I then had a working file on ChessBase and inputted the player ratings. After getting all the official results from the pairings software (one advantage of being an arbiter) I then looked for incorrect results (where a result differed from that on the team sheets). In a few cases I was surprised to find the colours in the raw PGN were opposite to those on the team sheets. It is possible that there are still errors in my corrected PGN files, so please let me know if you find any.

Here are all the games from the Junior Team Championships (1736 games, PGN) after correction of player names, event details etc. Some game scores are incomplete and others are missing. For missing scores, I have inserted player names and the published result in the PGN file. For reference purposes, here is the unedited PGN file of the teams event, from the official website.

I have not yet finalised my editing of the Wild Card events, so here is the unedited PGN file of the Wild Card events, from the official website.

Finally, here are all the games of the 2015 Inter Regional (172 games, PGN) after correction of player names, event details etc. Some game scores are incomplete and others are missing. For missing scores, I have inserted player names and the published result in the PGN file.

Wednesday 28 January 2015

Inter regional teams Kimberley

After the junior team championships was completed, the organisers hosted an inter regional teams event alongside the junior wild card championships. The Ethekwini region entered a team consisting of Mwale, Qobo, Beekrum, Gopaulsingh and Botha. We had many of the best players in South Africa competing in this event, to name just a few - Cawdery, Kobese, Gluckman, Mabusela, Toma, both Bhawoodiens, Bouah, Klaasen and Solomons.
The event was dominated from start to finish by the teams from Tshwane, Western Province A and Western Province B who finished in that order after an exciting final round, with only a single game point separating the three teams. The Ethekwini team finished in 5th place after a disappointing last round match against the back markers from Ehlanzeni. As some consolation, Shivar Gopaulsingh received a gold medal for his 4/4 score on the 4th board.

The organisers supplied PGN game files for each round, which needed a lot of editing. Here are the games of the 2015 Inter Regional in PGN after correction of player names, event details etc. Some game scores are incomplete and others are missing. For missing scores, I have inserted player names and the published result in the PGN file.

Saturday 27 September 2014

World Youth - stalemate discussion

There has been some discussion on the ChessBase website about the unfairness of stalemate resulting in a draw. I cannot agree with that sentiment. Stalemate should remain a draw! Centuries of endgame theory would be overturned if stalemate was not a draw, as the basic position of K+P versus K with the defending King in front of the pawn would no longer be drawn.

Consider the following diagram, from round 8 of the World Youth under 14 boys, with White to move. White has been defending a Bishop ending a pawn down, and has just swapped the dark squared Bishops, because he knows the pawn ending is drawn:


This is drawn because of the variations 1.Kc4 b3 2.axb3 axb3 3.Kxb3 Ke5 4.Kc4 Kf4 5.Kd5! f5 6.Ke6 swapping all the pawns, or else 4... f5 5.Kd3 Kf4 6.Ke2 Kg3 7.f4 Kxf4 8.Kf2 is a book draw, because of stalemate at the end. Yes, I know that 7.Ke3 also works.

Stalemate usually occurs through carelessness, or through a very clever defence. I saw an example of each case in round 8. In a game on one of the lower boards they had K+R vs K. The final position was wKh1 vs bKh3, with bRg3 causing a stalemate draw. That was extremely careless.

Here is an example of a very clever defence, with Black to move:


Here Black played 1... Re8 threatening Rh8# so 2.Qc7+ is forced, met by 2... Kg6 renewing the mate threat. However, after 2... Kg6 we see that the Kh4 has no legal moves, so White can sacrifice his Queen to achieve stalemate. Unfortunately White blundered and played 3.Qh7+?? Kxh7 4.Kh5 Re1 and had to resign.

Notice that any one of 3.Qb8, 3.Qc8 or 3.Qd8 would be a very clever defence to the mate threat! For example, 3.Qc8! Kf7 (3... Rxc8 is stalemate) 4.Qb7+ Kg6 5.Qxe4+ Rxe4 results in a pretty stalemate.

Wednesday 24 September 2014

World Youth - at the half-way mark

So far we have completed 6 of the 11 rounds, with today being a welcome rest day for the players and officials. At the half-way mark, our leading KZN player is Shivar Gopaulsingh (from Chatsworth) who is playing in the under 14 boys section. Shivar reached 3.5 points from 6 games with a win over Endre Machlik, rated 1902 (from Norway). In the Durban GM open, being held alongside the World Youth championships, we have 5 players on 3 out of 6, namely Qobo, Subke, Xulu, Moodley and Zuma. I will give some photos and games from the boys under 14 section, where I am an arbiter.

Birds eye view of boards 11 to 49 in the under 14 boys section
Kevin Schroeder (2250) from Germany, he lost this Bishop ending
 in round 6 vs his Lithuanian opponent Paulus Pultinevicius (2026)
but won this position with the White pieces in round 4. Black is forced to play
42... Kb6 after which 43. Qd8+ Kc5 44. Qc8+ clinched the game (of course,
he saw the simple trap 43. Rb2 "winning the Queen" is met by Qxb2+ here)
Paulius Pultinevicius of Lithuania, successful vs Schroeder, but this
photo is from his loss against Aram Hakobyan (Armenia) in round 4


Adham Fawzy (2119) from Egypt had a 70-move battle versus fellow Egyptian
Adham Kandil (1927) in round 6, with Kandil winning in the end
Top seed Roven Vogel (2434) from Germany has been battling to beat his lower rated opponents
Carlos Dias (deputy chief arbiter) and Giuseppe Buonocore (section arbiter, boys under 14)
meet about a defective clock, Salikh Ayupov (1489) from Kazakhstan just ignores them
To end off this report, here is an exciting game from round 6: