The club held its 122nd annual general meeting on 26th November. Desmond Rooplal
was re-elected as the Chairman and Keith Rust as the Captain of Play. The
new Treasurer is Nadean Gopaulsingh, who replaces Bongani Mgaga.
Here is a list of all the prize winners.
The club's annual Darrell Mhlongo blitz was played on 19th November as a
the double round-robin event and the clear
winner was Desmond Rooplal. The event was originally scheduled for 24th
September, but had to be postponed due to the church hall being fumigated.
The Third Swiss was won jointly by Sayen Naidu and Cyril Danisa. Thanks to
Nadean Gopaulsingh for acting as the arbiter in my absence. Here are the
final results after round 6.
The SA Club Team Championships took place at Glenwood Preparatory School in Durban
from the 8th to 11th of October. The club entered 3 teams into the FIDE rated A section
and 1 team into the B section of this event. Thanks go to Paul Curry who put in a lot
of time and energy into organising our teams, with players chopping and changing on an
almost daily basis. A notable upset occurred when our B team beat the A team in the first
round! Another unexpected result was Jonathan Bentham's draw against IM Daniel Cawdery,
who is currently SA's 2nd highest rated player.
Here are the results of section A
and the results of section B.
Here are the A team results,
B team results, C team results
and D team results.
Three-times Durban champion Reginald Borders was well known throughout the world for his chess column in the "Natal Mercury", published between 1903 and 1930. He was also a notable problem composer, and organised several problem competitions via his newspaper column. I found the following problem by Borders in an article published in the "South African Chess Player" in 1960. The composition date was not given, it was probably around 1920:
This problem baffled Desmond! If you want a clue, then I can tell you that promoting
to a Queen is only a draw. Once you see the idea, it is all forced and quite amusing.
Here is the solution.
The 2nd John Blackburn memorial was won by Joseph Mwale, who lost just one game, and finished
a point ahead of the field. The event saw some big upsets as well as some miraculous escapes!
Here are the final results after round 7.
Desmond has written a two-part review of the new chess themed movie
The Dark Horse, for the ChessBase website. Read the review, then chat to him about his
background research. We can all learn something from these New Zealanders.
The 2nd John Blackburn memorial swiss has just started and I have recently updated
my page on the 7-times club champion.
John's sister kindly donated a small suitcase labelled "chess games chronological" by John.
It contained hundreds of games recorded in old-fashioned (often ambiguous) descriptive notation.
Transcribing these has taken me many hours, partly because the games up to 1970 were written on a variety
of scraps of paper, rather than in a proper score book - John didn't waste any paper! The following file
contains Blackburn games from 1953 to 1972 (505 games/results).
A second installment of Blackburn games from 1973 onwards will follow later in the year.
The club played an 8-round (2 rounds per evening) rapid tournament from 25th June to 16th July 2015,
which was won by Keith Rust, ahead of Sean Arundel.
Here are the final results.
Our new joint champions gave a simultaneous display on 11th June, but very few members pitched up to test their skills, so the lucky few got to play first against Cyril Danisa, then against Joseph Mwale. Before the games started veteran Solly Kharwa (aged 70) showed us some sleight of hand tricks, making a R5 coin appear and disappear, much to Cyril's bemusement! Solly was unable to confuse Cyril on the chess board, but managed to defeat Joseph, in one of the biggest upsets of the year.
The annual club championships are now completed. Section A was closely contested, the eventual joint
winners were Joseph Mwale and Cyril Danisa who each scored 5½ points from 8 games. Here is the
final cross table.
Sean Arundel scored 5½ points from 6 games to win section B, with Henry Oliver in second place
on 4 points. Here is the cross table - note that Craig Jooste completed
1 game before withdrawing due to a family bereavement, so his score is annulled.
Section C was a 9-round Swiss, here are the final results.
Chad Millard was the clear winner with 7 points, followed by Mandla Mavundla and Jerry Zuma.
It is with sadness that we note the death of Ray Pietersen in the early hours of Friday 15th May. Ray joined the club in 1981 and played in almost all the club's tournaments. He was always a gentleman at the chessboard and will be missed by everybody at the club. Ray was a difficult opponent to defeat, and his last game was a draw in round 8 of the current club championships. His funeral was held on Thursday 21st May at the Presbyterian Church in Frere Road, Glenwood.
Durban Chess Club once again organised the annual KZN Open Championship, from 25th to 27th April
2015. With over R15 000 in prize money we expected lots of entries, but our usual visitors from
Johannesburg decided at the last minute to stay at home and play in the Orion series. We were
also disappointed by the response from local players. The championships were contested in two
sections, with section B restricted to junior players rated below 1400. A more detailed report,
with some annotated games, appears on my
KZN news blog.
Here are the final results:
A section results after round 8
B section results after round 8.
GAMES DOWNLOAD: 2015 KZN Open (62 games played on top boards).
Congratulations to Shivar Gopaulsingh, Cailin Chetty, Yadhav Noubouth, Eli-Jordan Govender, Mayilan Chetty,
Khulekani Danisa, Chad Millard, Anele Danisa, Aaron Jude Naidu and Mayuri Chetty who were invited to
this event in Pretoria. I was also invited as deputy chief arbiter.
The club hosted a one day Open rapid tournament on Saturday, 7th March 2015 at
Northlands Senior Primary in Durban North. The winner was Bongani Mgaga who scored
6½ points from his 7 games. The key game was his round 6 win against 2nd placed
Joseph Mwale. Also on 6 points, but placed 3rd on tie-break, was Petros Ntombela.
I have placed a
more detailed report with some games on my blog.
Here are the final results.
This tournament is now completed. The clear winner was Joseph Mwale, who conceded just one draw
(to Bongani Mgaga). Here are the final results after round 8.
This annual rapid event was won by club member Joseph Mwale, with 6½ points from 7 games.
On 5th February Eskom unexpectedly moved from stage 2 to stage 3 load shedding, after losing
a staggering 36% of their capacity. With stage 2 load shedding, Umbilo had lights on Thursday
evenings, but with stage 3 the Umbilo area was left without lights from about 6pm to 9pm.
Round 4 of the Moss Kolnik had to be postponed as a result of the load shedding.
Update: Ethekwini Municipality revised their load shedding schedule from April, so this
problem should not re-occur, unless the schedule is changed again.