Hess champs registration open

MBABANE – The countdown to the Eswatini Chess Federation (ECF) championships has begun.

ECF has opened registration for the qualifiers event, set to take place from March 23 to 25. The federation announced that the qualifiers would be held at Ka-Helemisi Free Evangelical Assemblies (FEA) in Manzini, adopting the Swiss system format with a time control of 60 minutes plus a 30-second increment per move, over six rounds.

The competition will be tight, with only the top seven men and top eight women securing their places in next month’s national championships. The victors of the qualifiers will join the top five ranked players in each category to vie for national supremacy.

The stakes are high as the national championships will also serve as a selection ground for the team to represent Eswatini at the Chess Olympiad.

Budapest, Hungary, is poised to host the prestigious 2024 Chess Olympiad from September 10 to 23, marking the 45 edition of the event. During the

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Olympiad held in India, Eswatini National Team Chess Ladies made their mark in 2022, winning gold.

Radebe also indicated that any developments on the matter would be communicated during the upcoming media day, the date of which is yet to be announced. “I’m currently out of the office; the appropriate person to communicate with at this time would be the national team’s coach as I am not aware of the team’s latest updates,” Radebe said.

Furthermore, attempts to contact Kunene for insights on the players’ current activities following the cancellation of their friendly match were unsuccessful yesterday. The match was supposed to be an opportunity to assess the 27-man squad.

Meanwhile, Filipo ultimately weakened as it moved across land on Tuesday, but continued to deliver strong winds and heavy rainfall in the Inhambane and Gaza provinces. Over the next 48 hours, heavy rainfall, strong winds and storm surge are forecast over Gaza and Maputo provinces in Mozambique, the whole of Eswatini and north-eastern South Africa. According to NASA, the storm was expected to turn southeast and move back over the Indian Ocean from today.