CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPS MARCH to MAY 2018
The club's annual championships started on 15th March. Thursday 24th will be the final round, as the church hall is not available to us on the 31st. Here is a list of the pairings and postponed games for sections A, B and C. Please read carefully and make sure you play your games as scheduled!

There were 3 round-robin sections and a Swiss section this year. These are the results so far of section A, section B and section C. Due to all the postponed games, it is impossible to predict the winners of these sections. Finally, here are the results of section D after 8 rounds and the pairings of round 9.

Please call Desmond on 083-788-8070 (or send him a whatsapp) BEFORE noon on Thursday if you are unable to play a particular game. If he is not available, please whatsapp Keith or email the club.

SA JUNIOR CLOSED APRIL 2018
The SA Junior Closed Chess Championships of 2018 were held recently in Benoni. Each age group section was an 11 round Swiss, with only the top juniors in SA competing. We congratulate the following members for being selected to play in this event - Chad Millard (u16), Charlotte Millard (u12), Thacian Reddy (u12), Lesharn Govender (u12), Keniesha Govender (u12), Kaedan Govender (u10) and Jorah Soojay (u10). Special kudos go to Kaedan Govender for his 1st place in the under 10 open section.
PS. Kaedan has now appeared on SABC news!

CLUB MEMBERSHIP 2018
Members are asked to complete the club membership form for 2018 and pay any subscriptions before entering the championships.

MHLONGO MEMORIAL BLITZ MARCH 2018
The traditional blitz tournament was won by Henry Oliver with 5/5. Here are the blitz results and I'm told that Cedric Nzama won the playoff for 2nd place.

MOSS KOLNIK MEMORIAL JANUARY to MARCH 2018
The club's first tournament of the 2018 year was won by Bongani Mgaga after he defeated co-leader Chad Millard in the last round. Here are the final results.

SA JUNIOR TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS JANUARY 2018
A number of our junior members took part in the annual SA junior team championships, which were held from 3rd to 8th January 2018 at the Birchwood Conference Centre in Boksburg. Here is a photo of the Ethekwini under 12A team, which won the bronze medals:

Thacian, Keniesha, Charlotte and Lesharn were in the u12 team

GM Hikaru Nakamura from the USA, one of the top 10 players in the world, was a special visitor to the junior championships. Here he is with Jorah Soojay, who played for the Ethekwini under 10A team and won a gold medal for his score of 6/7 on board 3:

Jorah Soojay with GM Nakamura

Here is a link to a superb report about Nakamura's visit, which was published on the chess.com website.

Recent updates: club championship sections and pairings, junior closed accolades, Mhlongo blitz results, Moss Kolnik results, SA Junior team event, Nakamura visit to SA, calendar for 2018, stories for 2017 archived.
For previous news stories refer to my News Archive page, which contains links to previous news stories going back to 2004.

Keith Rust.

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