iLembe's golden girls

As previously reported, the under 15 girls team from Khayalemfundo School in Mandeni were crowned as Top Schools chess champions in Pretoria in December 2015.

Their story has now been published in the Stanger Weekly newspaper of 10th February 2016: "On Friday (5th February 2016), officials of the iLembe Department of Education, KwaZulu-Natal Chess Association and the Department of Sport and Recreation paid an unannounced visit to the school to congratulate the pupils on their outstanding achievement."

 President of KwaZulu-Natal Chess Association, Sandile Xulu, heaped praise upon the school chess coach, Siyabonga Gumede, and the girls on their outstanding feat. He also presented each of the seven girls with a chess set and a chess clock. Click on this link for the full article on news24.

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).

Kenny Solomon masterclass

Just over a year ago Kenny Solomon became South Africa's first grandmaster, by winning the African individual chess championship held in Windhoek. Kenny currently lives in Venice and plays in a lot of open tournaments in Europe. He is a regular at the Gibraltar Masters open and was this year invited to do a video presentation on two of his best games, followed by answering questions about chess in South Africa. The video, titled Masterclass GM Kenny Solomon, is about 70 minutes long, and gives a fascinating look at his chess philosophy and his love for the game. I highly recommend this video!

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).

SA Junior Team champs

The annual SA Junior team championships took place in Cape Town at the UCT Sports Hall from 4th to 7th January 2016. KZN was well represented by teams from the Ethekwini, Ilembe and Uthungulu districts. The first 2 days were extremely uncomfortable in the playing hall, thanks to a heat wave, and thousands of litres of water were consumed by the players. Western Province (the hosts) took most of the gold medals in the A division after 7 rounds of gruelling competition, winning gold in 5 of the 7 age categories. The exceptions were the under 8 category, won by Tshwane, and the under 14 category, won by Ethekwini. Here is a link to the under 14 team results; the same page also lets you select other age group results that you may be interested in. The successful Ethekwini under 14 team was anchored by FIDE Masters Naseem Essa (left) and Cailin Chetty (right) on the top boards:

The writer was present as an arbiter for the team event. We all wore a high visibility red arbiters shirt and were kept very busy, mostly with illegal moves! I handled 63 illegal moves during the 7 rounds, as well as a variety of other incidents. In the photo, I'm listening to the Buffalo City team manager:

(photos selected from the Chess SA Facebook page)

December events

My apologies for not posting any chess news in December. I was taking a break for medical reasons and will now try and catch up with recent events. In the week ending 15th December 2015, KZN sent four teams to the SA Top Schools championships held in Pretoria. Our under 15 girls team from Khayalemfundo Primary school in the Ilembe district won a gold medal:

In the same week, the SALGA games for KZN were being held in  KwaDukuza (Stanger). Chess formed part of the SALGA games for the first time. Ethekwini were declared the best performing district after all the completed under 14 and under 20 results were combined (only 7 rounds of the round-robin sections were played). Unfortunately, I have not received any photos or the detailed results from this event.

This was followed on 20th December by the 7th JZ Chess Open, which took place in President Zuma's home town of Nkandla. The winners of the junior Team event (after 5 rounds) were Amajuba district. The winner of the Open section was Wanda Khanyile, on tie-break ahead of Khetha Mngadi and David Khondowe:

Thato Moremi, David Khondowe, Wanda Khanyile and Keith Khumalo

Last but not least, the African Youth chess championships took place in Lusaka, Zambia, from 6th to 12th December. Durban's Divesh Sookdeo was there as the SA team manager and his report can be found in article 448 on the Chess SA website. Five players from KZN were selected to play for South Africa, namely Karmishta Moodley, Naseem Essa, Keyana Padayachee, Kenyon Padayachee and Shivar Gopaulsingh. Congratulations go to Naseem Essa for his gold medal in the open under 12 division, which brings with it the title of FIDE Master. (At the time of writing, this event had not been rated by FIDE and so his title has not yet been updated). Also successful were Karmishta Moodley (silver medal, girls under 12) and Keyana Padayachee (silver medal, girls under 16).

Uthungulu championships

This event was held from 24th to 25th October 2015 in Richards Bay.

Sorry, no photos, but here are the results of the
under 16, 18 and 20 age groups,
under 14 age group, and
under 10 and 12 age groups.

SAPS Championships

I was invited to be the arbiter for the annual SAPS chess championships, held from the 10th to 15th October 2015. This year the event took place at the Port Edward Holiday Resort, about an hour and a half's drive from Durban. The resort has an interesting history, as the buildings were originally funded by collections made from police officers during the 2nd World War. For many years it was open only to members of the Police, but for the last 20 years it has been open to the public. Their large hall was just the right size for 100 or so chess players.

The first event to take place was the individual SAPS championship, held over 9 rounds at the standard 60/60 time control. There were 68 entries in the open section and 33 entries in the ladies section. This was immediately followed by the teams event, with a team from every province, plus one from head office in Pretoria - a 9 match round robin. The playing schedule was challenging, with 3 rounds on day 1, followed by 4 rounds a day on days 2, 3 and 4. The pace then eased off with the final 3 rounds on days 5 and 6.

As part of my duties, I was the judge of the "best game" prize for the individual events. This was my choice:


The event was well organised and there were very few incidents that required my intervention. Something that was new to me was the presence of two blind players (Bonnie and Melvyn) who used braille boards and special clocks. They both dictated their moves onto tape. One of Bonnie's opponents was not properly familiar with chess notation, so I had to organise an assistant for the sighted player! Another interesting incident occurred in one of Melvyn's games, where a Rook was on b8 on his braille board, but on a8 on the standard board. With the Rb8, Melvyn was winning a pawn, so this was critical. Unfortunately Black's scoresheet was completely illegible, and I was happy when Melvyn sportingly agreed to play on with Ra8. The game ended in a draw.

The top two seeds managed to avoid playing until round 9, which saw this exciting finish:

Rico Schutte vs David Maloba after 32... Qe6

Play started with the Rook sacrifice 33.Rxc6! f4 34.Rxa6? f3+ 35.Kh2 Qa2! 36.Ra8+ Kh7 37.Qd8 Qxf2+ 38.Kh3 Qg2+ 39.Kg4 Rg6+ 40.Kh5? and ended with the pretty Rook sacrifice 40... Rg5+! 41.hxg5 Qh3 mate. If the first Rook is taken, with 33... dxc6, then 34.d7 Rf8 35.d8=Q Rxd8 36.Qxd8+ Kh7 is about equal. So Black counter attacked. Rico should have played 34.Qd8+ Kh7 35.Rc8 fxe3! 36.h5! when Black's King is about to get mated (but my computer says Black can sacrifice his Rook to get a perpetual check!) At the end, Rico had to try 40.Kf5 Qh3+ 41.Kxe4 which is extremely hairy, but at least there is no forced mate.

Here are the final results of the open section and of the ladies section.

The team championships required every team to have a minimum of 4 ladies amongst their 10 players. Failure to meet this requirement resulted in a number of defaults on the bottom boards. Gauteng was one of the teams with only 9 players, yet they won by a large margin despite this handicap! Their top 3 men all won board prizes. There was a certain amount of discussion on how any ties would be decided, as this had not been spelt out by the LOC. My feeling was that every board should count, so we went with game points, followed by match points, as recommended by FIDE. Head Office, Eastern Cape and Western Cape had a thrilling contest for 2nd place. The last game to finish decided 2nd place in the team championships. Fittingly, this was the battle between the SAPS Chess chairman, Thabo Nonyana, and blind player, Melvyn Lucas, from Cape Town.

Thabo Nonyana vs Melvyn Lucas, after 38.Rxb7

By this time we knew that White had to win this game, so that his team would score 7-3 and overtake Eastern Province on tie-break. Hence after 38... Qxc5+ 39.Kh1 Nf2+ 40.Kh2 Ng4+ the King must come forward with 41.Kh3. Melvyn had less than 5 minutes here, and he went astray with 41... Qe3+? 42.g3 Qf2? threatening mate, but White got his punishment in first, by 43.Rxf7+ Kxf7 44.Rb7+ Ke8 45.Qe7 mate. The key idea for Black is to put his Queen on the h1/a8 diagonal, thus 41... Qd5! 42.Rxf7+ Kxf7 43.Qh4 Nf6! and Black has the better chances.

Lastly, here are the results of the team event, together with all of the board results.

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).