K250 000 for Mdina Chess Champion
The 2015 Mdina Southern Region Chess League (SRCL) Individual Championships has come with more appetising stakes for the champion. The first prize has been increased to K250 000 (about $588) from K100 000 (about $235).
South Africa-based engineers Tiwone Mdina and Wezi Chipeta, who have joined hands to sponsor the K1 million event, said they have decided to fatten the winner’s purse to increase competition.
“This is a deliberate move that aims at encouraging the players to be more serious on the chessboard. We want the standards of chess to greatly improve in Malawi,” said Mdina in a telephone interview from South Africa.
Mdina, who has contributed K600 000 of the sponsorship package, added that the K1 million support excludes marketing material and T-shirts for the competition, whose finals will be held at Victoria in Blantyre between May 15 and 17.
On his part, Chipeta, who used to play chess with Mdina during their days as engineering students at the Malawi Polytechnic, said he has come in to co-sponsor the competition as a way of thanking the community that helped to shape his career.
According to SRCL chairperson Terrence Namaona, the competition, which will be a Fide rated contest, will be more of a national event than a regional contest because each region will conduct qualifiers on April 4.
