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.

African Youth congrats

The 2016 African Youth championships took place from 22nd to 28th August 2016 in Port Elizabeth. Congratulations to the KZN medal winners at the tournament!






Yanti Nunnan    - 1st girls under 8
Aarti Datharam - 1st girls under 10

                                     Charlotte Millard
                                     - 3rd girls under 10

Here is a link to the full results of the under 10 girls section and from there you can browse to the other age group results.

Ethekwini Open entry

The Ethekwini Chess Association will be holding the annual Ethekwini Open on the weekend of 3rd/4th September 2016 at the Open Air School in Durban. Further details are in the entry form.

Uthungulu Youth champs

The annual Uthungulu Youth championships were held on 20th and 21st August 2016 at Hoerskool Richardsbaai. Only the best players, who had already been selected for the team for the SA Junior Nationals, were invited to play. The tournament was then used to decide on their board order.

Here is a selection of photos, courtesy of Lisa Griffiths and her trusty cellphone:

Under 10: 1st Arav Surujhlal, 2nd Ayanda Shangase, 3rd Wian Diedericks

Under 12 players: Philidile Madela vs Nomphilo Ntuli

Hannah Gounden, board 1 of the u12 B team, plays Olwethu Chili

Under 14: Liam Moonsamy (1st) vs Mongezi Shoba (2nd)

Under 16: 2nd Sandile Mdunge, 1st Mthobisi Sibiya, 3rd Manelisa Sithole 

Uthungulu under 18 team

I watched the end of an interesting game in round 5 between Sandiso Damone and Siyanda Khumalo. This was the position with each player having about 10 minutes left on his clock:

Sandiso Damone (to move) vs Siyanda Khumalo

Black threatens mate in 2 so 1.Qd6+ Kb7 is forced, and now Sandiso chose 2.Qd5+ instead of  2.Qd2 which looked promising. Since Black cannot play 2.Qd2 Re1+ 3.Kf2 R7e2+ 4.Qxe2 etc he would have to try and double his Rooks on the 7th rank with 2.Qd2 Re2 3.Qd5+ Kb8 4.Qxc4 Rb2! and it looks like a draw after 5... Ree2 follows. After 2.Qd5+ Ka6 3.Qa8+ Kb5 4.Qd5+ Siyanda should have taken the draw with 4... Ka6 5.Qa8+ Kb5 etc, but instead he chose to escape the checks with 4... Ka4? Do you see the refutation? Sandiso quickly sacrificed his Queen with 5.Qxe4! and the game ended with 5... Rxe4 6.b7 Re8 7.a6 Kb3 8.a7 Kxc3 9.b8=Q Rxb8 10.axb8=Q and White won.

Detailed results for each age group section were as follows:
under 10,
under 12,
under 14,
under 16,
under 18 & 20.

ECA trials 2 results

The second Ethekwini Youth Trials took place at the Open Air School from 6th to 8th August 2016. Here are the final results after 7 rounds for each section:

under 18 & 20 combined,
under 16 age group,
under 14 age group,
under 12 age group,
under 8 & 10 combined.

The selectors met on 9th August to agree on the squads for this years National team championship. The Ethekwini squad will consist of 2 under 8 teams, 1 under 10 team, 1 under 12 team, 2 under 14 teams, 2 under 16 teams, 2 under 18 teams, 1 under 20 team and 1 girls only team.

I append the names of those in the squad as per the Ethekwini Chess Association website, together with a copy of the ECA selection policy.

Uthungulu Fun

On 30th and 31st July Uthungulu held a 7 round fun tournament. There was an open section and a junior schools section. Part of the fun involved the leaders in the junior section wearing a crown! There were also some lucky draw prizes sponsored by South32 and the Uthungulu Municipality. Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Hoping to get a prize from the lucky draw

Youngest player Kirthan Naidoo was 2nd in under 10

Wearing the crowns - Gabriel Gounden vs Bryce Vorster

Wearing the crowns - Tlhoni Tsotetsi vs Simphiwe Majozi

Table 29 - Uvash Harrilall vs Arya Singh

These were the final results of the open section and of the junior section of the fun and money tournament.

2nd Ethekwini trials

These are scheduled to take place from the 6th to 8th August 2016. There will be 7 rounds played at 90 minutes per player per game. Further details are contained in the entry form.

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.

KZN District photos

Thanks to Sifiso Xulu, here is a selection of 30 photos from the KZN District team championships held at Coastlands Conference Centre in Durban: