Malawians put up good fight at C’wealth Chess

Malawi’s four representatives at the week-long 2013 Commonwealth and South African Open Chess Championships in South Africa have put up a good fight.

The competition has attracted 814 players, including 30 grandmasters and 40 international masters from Commonwealth member States, but candidate masters Chiletso Chipanga and Richard Mbedza alongside unrated stars Joseph Mwale and Ellen Mpinganjira do not seem to feel out of place. They have so far squeezed themselves into the list of top 300 players.

Chipanga and Mwale are the best performers for Malawi at the moment as each has collected 4.5 points from eight games and they remained with three matches to complete their fixtures as we went to press.

Mbedza and Mpinganjira, the country’s only female  contestant, have gathered four points and 3.5 points respectively.

Mpinganjira is among the best 30 female players out of the 52 contesting although she stayed idle for about six months before her trip to Johannesburg last week.

Currently, the top-five list is dominated by the Indian grandmasters Abhijeet Gupta, Dibyendu Barua, Lalith Rohit Musunuri and female player Ann Mary Gomes, who only left the fourth slot to Ukrainian Sergey Fedorchuk.

A tie-breaker pushed Gupta to the top after he tied on seven points with Barua, Musunuri and Fedorchuk. Gomes is fifth with six points.

However, Malawi’s ambassadors confessed on their Facebook walls two days ago that their only stumbling blocks to breaking into the top 100 positions at the event are the grandmasters and the international masters who give them no chance to manouvre.

Mwale wrote on his wall after losing a game he could have easily drawn against South African grandmaster Kenny Solomon: “Eish! I played my best chess against Ken. He won. Knight and five pawns versus knight and five pawns; a dead draw. But he is a grandmaster, so he hanged me.”

However, Chess Association of Malawi (Chessam) publicist Gilton Mkumbwa saluted the players, saying they have put up a gallant fight that might catapult them to better rankings despite participating in the competition for the first time.