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Brandon Moyo, [email protected]

IT was an action-packed day for chess enthusiasts in the city as Bulawayo’s Chess Mates Academy (CMA) hosted the 2023 CMA Junior Chess Tournament that was played at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) on Saturday.

Nust

At least 300 participants took part in the day-long fiesta, competing in four categories, Under-20, Under-18, Under-14 and Under-10s.

The Under-14s had the most participants, attracting a field of 145 players, followed by Under-18s that had 77 participants and Under-10s with 63 players. The seniors, Under-20s had 22 players.

In the Under-10s, Andile Cornelius Mpofu proved to be a star in the making as he emerged victorious with five points from five matches, having won all his games. He was followed by another rising star Tyrone Mathiya who had the same number of points but were separated by the Sonneborn-Berger (SB) value. Mpofu had an SB value of 15.50 while Mathiya was at 15. In third place was Nompilo Ncube with four points.

SB value also separated the winners in the Under-14s category with Nyasha Mutungura winning the category followed by Wandile Nyathi and Nathan Moyo. All the three players were on five points having won all their five games.

Mutungura had a higher SB value of 14.50, followed by Nyathi on 13 and Moyo on 11.50 to make the top three.

In the Under-18s age group, the SB value also came into play once again, separating Knowledge Samboko and Alms Machengedzero who both had five points. Samboko won the category with an SB value of 17 while Machengedzero finished in second with a value of 16. In third place was Banenkosi Ndiweni who finished with 4.5 points, having won four and drawn one game.

The last age group, the Under-20s, was won by Dambamuromo Tavonga who finished with 6.5 points. Donald Mbondo was second on six points, with Fortune Ndebele third on 5.5 points.

Tournament organiser, Priscah Sibanda was impressed with the way things unfolded on Saturday, stating that she organised the event as means to showing people that chess is open to everyone as it is an unpopular sport.

“I decided to do this because chess was lagging behind, if you notice, chess is not a very common sport but we wanted people to be aware that chess can be played by any child, and anyone. I just wanted to motivate our children and show them that chess can be played by any child and the other good thing about it is that it’s an all-weather sport, it is not affected by weather.

“It is also an academic sport, that is another main reason why we focus on chess because we consider it to be not just an ordinary sport but an academic sport that helps build our children’s intelligence,” said Sibanda.

The tournament was also supported by Silo Foods and Sibanda promised that more competitions are on the cards. 

– @brandon_malvin