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.
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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!
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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!
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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.
