DURBAN CHESS FUNDIS

News Archive
2004-2019
Club Information DCC Champions KZN Champions Sundry Notes Download Page KZN News Blog
2014-2018

WELCOME TO MY WEBSITE
This website is devoted to the history of the Durban Chess Club and to the stories of chess players who lived and breathed chess in Durban and its surrounding areas. Durban Chess Club was founded in 1893, making it one of the oldest chess clubs in South Africa. I joined the club in 1974 and was privileged to win the club championships a record 25 times, before retiring from active play at the end of 2018.

Coverage of current events at DCC will be limited as I am no longer active at the club. In the news archive you will find all the reports that I wrote about the club from 2004 to 2019. I have also written extensively about chess in KZN from 2014 to 2018, and you will find these reports on my blog.

IMPORTANT NOTICE
All Durban Chess Club activities were suspended in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. For more information visit the Department of Health website. The chairman and his committee all decided to quit in 2020 and the club has not yet been able to reopen.

EARLY NEWSPAPER RESEARCH
The National Library of Australia has scanned a large number of old newspapers, which can be found at the Trove website. They ran OCR on the images to make the website searchable. The index is not perfect, but I was still able to find lots of news from the early days of the Durban Chess Club. Apparently the Australians liked to reprint chess items from Border's column in the Natal Mercury, which included problems and news from the Durban Chess Club! I have transcribed some of these game scores for my pages on Durban champions. Researching online like this is much easier than trying to read the battered microfilm at the Durban Reference Library.

INTERVIEW ON TWITCH TV
I was interviewed in 2020 by Lyndon Bouah on the Calvin Klaasen chess channel. Calvin and Lyndon have been producing the "Reflections" series of interviews on Tuesday nights from early September and they are well worth watching, with a wide range of South African chess personalities as guests. Go to the Calvin Klassen Chess channel on Twitch TV to see the interview with myself. You can skip the first 5 minutes where we were checking that everything was working. I went through 3 of my games in the middle of the show, and here is a link to the games discussed on the show. The show lasted just over an hour.

DURBAN ONLINE CHESS (DOC)
In the early days of the pandemic, with over-the-board chess no longer being played, chess players all over the world switched to online chess instead. Riccardo Benedetti formed a group for Durbanites to engage each other in online chess activities, which I believe is now administered by Devon Govender and Henry Oliver. Those interested should first join lichess then apply to join the "Durban Online Chess" team. Detailed results and games from online DOC events can be found at the DOC events page.

NASHLEN STARS FOR OXFORD
Former DCC champion Nashlen Govindasamy was studying at Oxford University in 2020 and took part in the annual Oxford vs Cambridge match, held on 7th March 2020. Here is a link to an article by John Saunders about the match. I was interested to see that Nashlen played on board 6 and was awarded the best game prize (a painting) for his effort. Here is the score of Nashlen's game:

[Event "Varsity Oxford-Cambridge 138th"] [Site "London, RAC"] [Date "2020.03.07"] [Round "1.6"] [White "Govindasamy, Nashlen"] [Black "Shafi, Declan"] [Result "1/2-1/2"] [ECO "E60"] [WhiteElo "2055"] [BlackElo "2158"] [PlyCount "184"] [EventDate "2020.03.07"] [EventType "team-match"] [EventRounds "1"] [EventCountry "ENG"] [WhiteTeam "Oxford University"] [BlackTeam "Cambridge University"] [WhiteTeamCountry "ENG"] [BlackTeamCountry "ENG"] 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nf3 Bg7 4. e3 O-O 5. Be2 d5 6. cxd5 Nxd5 7. e4 Nb6 8. O-O Bg4 9. Nbd2 e5 10. d5 c6 11. h3 Bc8 12. a4 cxd5 13. a5 dxe4 14. axb6 exf3 15. Rxa7 fxe2 16. Qxe2 Bf5 17. Rxa8 Bd3 18. Qe3 Bxf1 19. Kxf1 Qd5 20. Qb3 Qc5 21. Nc4 Nc6 22. Be3 Nd4 23. Rxf8+ Kxf8 24. Qa3 Qxa3 25. bxa3 Ke7 26. Na5 Kd6 27. Nxb7+ Kc6 28. Nd8+ Kxb6 29. Nxf7 Kb5 30. Ng5 h6 31. Bxd4 exd4 32. Ne6 Bf6 33. a4+ Kxa4 34. Ke2 Kb5 35. Kd3 Kc6 36. Nxd4+ Kd5 37. Ne2 g5 38. Ke3 Ke6 39. Ke4 Be7 40. Ng3 Kf6 41. Nf5 Bf8 42. g4 Ke6 43. Nd4+ Kf6 44. Kd5 Ba3 45. Nb5 Bb2 46. Nd6 Ba3 47. Ne4+ Kg6 48. Ke6 Bb4 49. Nf6 Be1 50. f3 Bf2 51. Nd7 Be1 52. Ne5+ Kg7 53. Kf5 Bf2 54. Ng6 Be1 55. f4 gxf4 56. Nxf4 Bd2 57. Ne2 Kf7 58. Nd4 Bc1 59. Nf3 Be3 60. h4 Bc1 61. Ne5+ Kg7 62. h5 Bd2 63. Ke6 Bc1 64. Nc6 Bd2 65. Ne7 Bg5 66. Nf5+ Kf8 67. Ng3 Kg7 68. Ne4 Bc1 69. Ke7 Be3 70. Ng3 Bg5+ 71. Ke6 Kf8 72. Ne4 Bh4 73. Nd6 Bg5 74. Nf5 Kg8 75. Ne7+ Kg7 76. Nd5 Bc1 77. Ke7 Bg5+ 78. Ke6 Bc1 79. Nc7 Bg5 80. Ne8+ Kf8 81. Nf6 Kg7 82. Ne4 Bc1 83. Ke7 Bb2 84. Ng3 Bf6+ 85. Ke6 Bg5 86. Kf5 Kf7 87. Ne4 Bc1 88. g5 Bxg5 89. Nxg5+ hxg5 90. Kxg5 Kg7 91. h6+ Kg8 92. h7+ Kxh7 1/2-1/2

GERALD BOULLE article updated
I have added commentary on the games of Gerald Boulle, who was an 8-times DCC champion, and 7-times Natal champion.

MOSS KOLNIK MEMORIAL SWISS 2020
The 2020 Moss Kolnik was won by Jorah Soojay. Here are the results.

SA JUNIOR TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS JANUARY 2020
The annual junior team championships took place in Boksburg in January 2020. Most districts sent a team to the event which was dominated by Tshwane and Western Province as usual. One of the three gold medals that got away from them went to the Ethekwini under 18 team! The other 2 medals went to Johannesburg Metro in the under 8 and under 10 age groups. Metro scored an astonishing number of points in the under 10, with +66 -1 =3 in games. Surely a new record? Can Metro keep this team together for future years?

See under 18 results here with links available to the other age groups. Two DCC members in the under 18 team got medals: Naseem Essa (gold, board 1) and Chad Millard (silver on tiebreak, board 7). Other DCC members who won board medals were Charlotte Millard (gold, bd 2, u14), Jorah Soojay (gold, bd 1, u12) and Nanditha Pillai (silver, bd 4, u12).

AFRICAN YOUTH CHAMPIONSHIPS 2019
Several members of DCC took part in the African Youth Championships which were held in Windhoek in December. Jorah Soojay won the bronze medal in the under 12 open section, and the South African team as a whole won 10 medals. Here is a link to the results of the South African team and here is Jorah's win against the top seed from Egypt:

[Event "African Youth under 12"] [Site "Windhoek"] [Date "2019.12.17"] [Round "3"] [White "Khaled, Yousef"] [Black "Soojay, Jorah"] [Result "0-1"] [WhiteElo "1935"] [BlackElo "1423"] 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Nf6 3.d4 Nxd5 4.c4 Nf6 5.Nf3 Bf5 6.Nc3 c6 7.h3 e6 8.Be3 Be7 9.Bd3 Bxd3 10.Qxd3 Nbd7 11.O-O O-O 12.Rad1 Nb6 13.Ne5 h6 14.f4 Nc8 15.g4 Nh7 16.Ne4 Nd6 17.Ng3 Ne8 18.Rd2 Bf6 19.Rdf2 Bh4 20.Kg2 Nd6 21.c5 Nb5 22.f5 Nf6 23.fxe6 Qd5+ 24.Kh2 Bxg3+ 25.Kxg3 Ne4+ 26.Kh2 Nxf2 27.Rxf2 Qxe6 28.a4 Nc7 29.Bf4 Nd5 30.Bd2 b6 0-1


The free PGN game viewer from ChessBase has been added to all pages where there are games. See above for an example of this viewer.
The fan button starts an analysis engine and there is also an option to download the moves.
For previous news stories about DCC refer to my News Archive, which contains links to previous news stories going back to 2004.