JASON SUBKE IS NEW CLUB CHAMPION
The club started its annual championships on 14th March 2019. The Championship and Candidates sections were both 10 player round robins, with the time control of 90 minutes each with a 30 second increment. These sections were FIDE rated and I have captured the available game scores, which can be downloaded as noted below.

When I last reported, it was impossible to predict a winner in Section A, as so many games had been postponed. Now the dust has settled, we have a new champion, Jason Subke, with Cyril Danisa taking 2nd place. Here are the final results, with 36 games.

YOUNG SOOJAY WINS SECTION B
Section B was won by Durban's top under 12 player, Jorah Soojay, with 8 out of 9. It will be interesting to see how he fares in section A next year. In joint 2nd place were Riccardo Benedetti and Senzo Msimango. Here are the final results, with 39 games.

MTOBOYI CLEAN SWEEPS SECTION C
The C section of the Club Championships was a 9 round Swiss section. It was won by Sipho Mtoboyi with a clean score of 9 out of 9. Second place was taken by Devon Govender. Here are the final results.

KZN OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP (APRIL)
The 2019 KZN open was organised by KZN Chess Association at the last minute at the end of April. Instead of the usual 7 rounds being played over a long weekend, the event was shortened to 6 rounds over 2 days, namely the 27th and 28th April. The other consequence was that the time control was also shortened to 60 minutes each per player, instead of using the FIDE time control of 90 minutes plus 30 second increments as in the previous 2 years. It was a case of fastest fingers first, and the outright winner was Lindokuhle Xulu with 5½ points. Here are the results of section A and of section B.

UMHLANGA INVITATIONAL (APRIL)
The Umhlanga invitational, from the 19th to 21st April, was the strongest event to be held in KZN this year. It was won by our former club champion, CM Nashlen Govindasamy, who narrowly pipped the reigning SA champion, IM Johannes Mabusela. The other players were the top 2 under 16 players in SA, namely CM Banele Mhango and club member FM Naseem Essa. I was the Arbiter and had an interesting time setting up some new DGT smart boards. The new boards are made of plastic and are much lighter and much cheaper than the previous wooden DGT boards. The DGT software took some getting used to, but I was able to successfully broadcast all of the live games. The games and the final results can be found here.

NEW SA UNDER 8 CHAMPION
Congratulations to Daaruk Kumarasamy on becoming the South African under 8 champion, with the fine score of 8 out of 9.

Daaruk with his father at the SAJCC (photo from Facebook)