NICK BARNETT CHESS

THE SOUTH AFRICAN Open Chess Championship 2019 will be nearing its end when you read this. Held at the Mittah Seperepere Convention Centre in Kimberley, Northern Cape, from June 15 to 23, 2019. The roots of this tournament go back to 1962. It has been held every year except for 1992 when the unification of various sports was held. This year it combines with the South African Schools Individual Chess Championships, the South African Rapid Chess Championships and the South African Blitz Chess Championships and is marketed as the the South African Open Chess Festival. The top ten rated participants in the championship are the following. (The two ratings are respectively 1. International and 2. National.) IM Kobese Watu 2344, 2385; IM Oatlhotse Providence 2244, 2298; FM Mwale Joseph 2252, 2225; IM Mabusela Johannes Manyedi 2220, 2229; Mnguni Jacob Dumisani 2141, 2164; Zwakala Ntando 2088, 2145; CM Khumalo Keith 2048, 2101; Mthunzi Brighton 2006, 2071; PM Amini Daud 2040, 2024 FM Beukes Dante 1995, 2017. Two interesting facts about this list. • Except for Watu and Johannes, none of our higher rated players are taking part. Possibly the prize money was not attractive or perhaps it was too out-of-the way? • Several players from the north did find it worthwhile: Oatlhotse from Botswana, Mwale from Malawi, Daud from Zimbabwe and Beukes from Namibia. Results can be found here: www.saopen2019.com * * * THE NORWAY CHESS tournament ended in predictable fashion with Magnus Carlsen the winner, head and shoulders above his competitors. Final top 5: Magnus Carlsen 13,5; 2. Levon Aronian 10,5; 3. Yu Yangyi 10,5; 4. Fabiano Caruana 10; 5; Wesley So 10. Tarjei Svenson, loyal follower of Carlsen, points out on his twitter account: ‘Carlsen has now won 7 straight tournaments: Norway Chess, Lindores Abbey, Abidjan GCT, Grenke Chess Classic, Shamkir Chess, Wijk aan Zee and World Blitz Chess. But a reason may be found in Carlsen’s comments during and after: ‘I’ve been influenced by my heroes recently, which is AlphaZero and also one of my seconds from the world championship, [Daniil] Dubov, who has a lot of these ideas with sacrifices in the opening. In essence I’ve become a very different player in terms of style than I was a bit earlier and it’s been a great ride.’ But he added ‘I still feel like I can do better! [My] classical games were not that convincing,’ he said and explained that he was not dealing well with some of the interesting positions he got, and he admitted that he hasn’t been fully focused on this part of the tournament. For comment or news write to thechessnik@gmail.com