1st ECA Grand Prix results

The first Ethekwini Grand Prix tournament took place at Berea Primary School on 23rd and 24th May 2015. A total of 144 players took part in 7 rounds of 60/60 chess. Sorry, no photos!

Here are the final results for each age group:
under 08 group,
under 10 group,
under 12 group,
under 14 group,
under 16 group,
under 18 group,
under 20 group.

Here is a copy of the ECA Selection Policy which explains the grand prix points system. For more information contact Divesh Sookdeo.

Lastly, here is the 2nd Grand Prix entry form. This event is to be held from 27th to 29th June at Northwood High School.

Uthungulu Youth Trials

The Uthungulu Youth Trials attracted 156 players and took place on 16th and 17th May 2015. All the players fitted quite comfortably in the main hall at Hoerskool Richardsbaai.

The playing hall at Hoerskool Richardsbaai (arbiter in the corner)

The ages of the players varied from 7 years old to 19 years old. The largest number of competitors was in the under 14 group, which had 54 players. The selections committee decided to send 2 teams to Nationals from this age group. Here is a photo of two of the under 14 competitors:

Stacey Stewart vs Bayanda Ndlovu (under 14 section)

Lisa Griffiths showing one of the magnificent floating trophies

Chairperson Lisa Griffiths was delighted with the new floating trophies, which were sponsored by some of the parents. The top 3 received a miniature, places 4 to 10 received medals, and the winners will have their names placed onto the floating trophies.

Top under 20 players Siyanda Khumalo (trophy winner) and Lungelo Mthembu

Here are the final results after round 7 for each age group:
under 12 results,
under 14 results,
under 16 results,
under 20 results.

For more information, please contact Lisa Griffiths.

Ethekwini Youth Grand Prix

The Ethekwini Chess Association will be holding their 1st Youth Grand Prix tournament on 23rd to 24th May 2015 at Berea Primary School. It will be contested over 7 rounds played at 60/60 time control and is for the following age groups: under 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.

Grand Prix points will be awarded to the top 20 players per age group per tournament, starting with 20 points for 1st place, 19 points for 2nd place, down to 1 point for 20th place. GPX points for each player's best 2 tournaments will be added together to get a GPX ranking list for selection purposes.

Here is the 1st Grand Prix entry form which must be completed and sent to Divesh Sookdeo no later than 21st May 2015.

There will be three Grand Prix events this year. A minimum of 2 of the 3 tournaments must be played to be eligible for selection. The 2nd Grand Prix tournament will take place at Northwood High School from 27th to 29th June 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.

Dolphin Coast April Swiss

Coach Spa reports from Ilembe: Dolphin Coast Chess Club was proud to host a tournament on 18th April 2015 that attracted higher rated players from Durban to participate in our tournament. We are promoting rated tournaments in our area. In the past we hardly had rated tournaments. The forming of the Dolphin Chess Club will allow many local kids an opportunity to play rated tournaments with a chance to gain rating points and hopefully improve the standard of play.

We had 51 participants competing for the first prize of R1 000. The tournament was played over 5 rounds in a 60/60 format. In the adult section Joseph Mwale tied for first with Lulama Qobo on 5/5, followed by Cyril Danisa and Phiwe Phakathi who tied for 3rd place.

Organisers Natalie Smith and Kerry Evetts, Lulama Qobo, Joseph Mwale, arbiter Spa Nkosi

The High school section was won by Richard Paterson, 2nd place Demmer Brown, 3rd place Luthuli Lungelo. In the Primary School section 1st place went to Kiaren Naidoo, 2nd place Tashiv Govender, 3rd place Jamie Evetts.

Here are the final results after round 5, for all the sections.

USSA Championship 2015

The South African University (USSA) Closed Chess Championship is taking place from the 23rd to 27th April 2015 at Wits University in Johannesburg. Unfortunately Nashlen Govindasamy declined his invitation, leaving Rahul Beekrum as the only KZN player in the tournament.

The games are being broadcast live by Tshwane chess, and all the tournament results are on the chess-results website. There are events for both men and women.

For more information on university chess in KZN please contact Divesh Sookdeo, who is both the arbiter and the tournament director for this event.

Chess at Albert Luthuli Museum

Coach Spa reports from Ilembe: The Albert Luthuli museum in Groutville hosted a rapid chess tournament on 11 April 2015. We had 64 participants consisting of junior and adult players from Kwadukuza and surrounding areas.

Proud winners of the Albert Luthulu rapid tournament

The Adult section was won by Phiwe Phakathi, 2nd was Siphelele Mbambo and 3rd Siyabonga Gumede .

The High School section was won by Lungelo Luthuli on a full score 7/7, 2nd was Banele Mboka and 3rd Sandile Hadebe.

The Senior Primary section was won by Zion Sewraj, 2nd was Minenhle Zikalala and 3rd Sandiso Zulu.

Here are the detailed results of the Luthuli rapid chess tournament.

Dolphin Coast - new club

Press Release.

The Dolphin Coast Chess Club has been launched and one of our local chess coaches, Siphamandla Nkosi, has qualified as the first chess arbiter in the Ilembe district.

Nkosi, known to his players as Coach Spa, has been involved in chess for 12 years and has been coaching the Umhlali Preparatory chess players and all Senior Primary pupils for the past 10 years. His recent qualification ensures that our local tournaments can qualify as rated tournaments. This is a huge advantage for our local players as it offers them the opportunity to play skilled players and challenges them to improve the level of their game.

The Dolphin Coast Chess Club is a new initiative to encourage chess players (beginners to masters) to participate competitively in the Ilembe district. The Dolphin Coast Chess Club will be run as a club to ensure minimum expenses to the members. An annual membership fee will ensure that the players receive three rated tournaments per year and that the club will be able to accumulate chess equipment. Two Swiss format tournaments are also planned for the year.

Our vision is to create a respected club of high calibre chess players that are passionate for the game and to encourage and develop new players of all ages.

The Chess Club will meet at Umhlali Preparatory School on Wednesday evenings during the school term. For more information, please email Kerry or phone her on 0711436466.

Three SA junior champions!!

KZN has got three new national champions!! Congratulations to Shivar Gopaulsingh, the under 16 open champion, to Ananta Reddy, the under 14 open champion, and to Karmishta Moodley, the under 12 girls champion. Shivar won his gold medal after defeating Justin Lynch 2-0 in a playoff match. In addition, Naseem Essa won the silver medal in the under 12 open division, and Aarti Datharam received the bronze in the under 10 girls competition.

Shivar, Ananta and Karmishta

The SA Junior Closed chess championships took place at Waterkloof High School in Pretoria from 4th to 10th April 2015. I hadn't been to Waterkloof High School before. It was a great venue for SA's top junior competition, easily accessible and with lots of space for everybody.

I was invited to be one of the two deputy chief arbiters. After driving from Durban to Pretoria on the 3rd, my first appointment was an arbiters meeting in the late afternoon, when we met to discuss the final tournament rules, venue set up and so on. The school hall was not big enough to accommodate all 278 players, so the top boards in all age groups, except for under 8's, played upstairs near the auditorium. We had 108 players upstairs, with about half of these games played on DGT boards, which transmitted the moves live over the internet for everybody to see.

The first round on the 4th was chaotic. Both myself and Fransie Grobbelaar, the other deputy chief arbiter, stayed upstairs with the top players, with the other arbiters downstairs in the main hall. In addition to resolving disputes between the top players, we were expected to record the results for the top players and check the results submitted by age group arbiters. It was simply unworkable! We decided that from round 2 all score keeping would be done downstairs. We also agreed that Fransie would move downstairs and supervise the majority of the games and arbiters. My KZN colleague Divesh Sookdeo moved upstairs as he was the arbiter of the under 16 boys section, and we also later enlisted Henro van der Westhuizen to our team for the top boards. Once this was done, we were able to resolve everything at the board and had no more appeals affecting the top players.

Well, that's enough background information for now. I had a ringside seat to most of the top games and will write more about the tournament in later posts. Here is a link to the official SAJCCC website and here is a link to the under 18 results page, from which you can navigate to all the other age group results.