NICK BARNETT CHESS
MAGNUS CARLSEN’S first tournament in Africa proved gratifying as he secured a win in Abidjan, Côte d’ivoire. The Rapid & Blitz was the first leg of the 2109 World Chess Tour. He had the tournament in his pocket with two rounds to spare.
Maintaining a safe lead throughout three days of rapid and two days of blitz, he ended on 26.5/36, three-anda-half points ahead of Hikaru Nakamura and Maxime Vachier-lagrave, who finished on 23/36.
Carlsen has won every tournament he has played in this year and has suffered only two defeats, both in blitz against Vachier-lagrave.
His win garnered him $37000!
The next leg will be in Zagreb, Croatia (Classical) from June 24 to July 9, 2019, The third leg will be in Paris France It will be a Rapid & Blitz, July 26 - August 2, 2019. Thereafter St Louis Missouri Rapid & Blitz, August 8 - 15, 2019, St. Louis, Sinquefield Cup (Classical), August 15 30, 2019, St. Louis, Superbet Rapid & Blitz, November 4 - 11, 2019, Bucharest, Romania, and finally the Tata Steel India Rapid & Blitz, November 20 - 27, 2019, Kolkata, India.
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Talking about Africa, I get regular news from David Muwanguzi, the Publicity Secretary for the Uganda Chess Federation. The latest missive (sent mostly to chess officials and schools in Uganda) says: ‘UCF is committed to providing books, chess videos, relevant information on tournaments and other materials. Attached were 16 attachments of sets of puzzles compiled by Sam Shankland and a few books including ‘Why we lose at chess’ by Colin Couch.
This gesture is made possible by the president of the Uganda Chess Federation Emmanuel Mwaka, who is also an Executive Board Member of the World Chess Body (FIDE) and according to David ‘is committed to providing Chess Literature to improve the quality of Chess players in Uganda’. If only we had that here… •••
CHESSA has a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ Chess-south-africa) so some South African news and events can now be found there. The next event advertised (would be nice to have all the events on the calendar, throughout the country!) is the Johannesburg Metro on the 25th – 26th May.
They have also added some information to their nascent website – the slow population of the site may have to do with the post of Publicity Manager (unlike that in Uganda), being vacant.
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NIGEL SHORT (@nigelshortchess) tweeted this question: ‘What chess connection do Jacques Chirac and Pope John Paul II have?’
No followers knew! The answer is that they have both been made Grand Commanders of the Legion of Grandmasters by FIDE.
For comment and news please write to thechessnik@ gmail.com
PUZZLE BY JC Andrews