Fast Report On The Satellite Millionaire's Chess Open In Nairobi

A busy day in Nairobi!

30th April 2015 is the tax deadline and all accountants have their hair on fire today!  That includes chess lovers like us.

I could not resist the urge to go to Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) today and get some photos and updates on this amazing event in Nairobi.  Thanks to Kasparov Chess Foundation for putting Nairobi on the world stage.

Security was incredibly tight.  First check is right at the perimeter of the venue, then when you enter the building and then once again when you reach the floor where chess is taking place.

Mean looking armed policemen were everywhere.  I did not want to ask anyone for a photo!

The draw for the first round is shown here;

http://www.chess-results.com/tnr171512.aspx?lan=1&art=2&rd=1&turdet=YES&flag=30&wi=984

There were some small upsets - top seeded Emojong Elijah missed his first round!  The Ethiopian squad of was missing in action which is a shame.

Elijah Emojong during the 3rd Capablanca Cup in Nairobi held in 16th & 17th February 2013

In the second round Elijah was present and went on to play Peter Gilruth and won.

View from the balcony

All chair covers have the logo

Our Father of the Nation - Late President Kenyatta

A close up view.

I bring you very few photos due to the huge security around the venue and I was scared that I would be asked too many questions.

A total of 188 players have registered for this event which has 3 groups - Prestige, Open and the Juniors.  I will be playing the Open section and hope to get my readers some more photos during the week.  It has been tough getting my mind to accept that I have to play for 3 full days.

Now to some chess photos.  Unfortunately by the time I reached only one game was going on so I did not get many photos.  Here is what you can see;

Nerve centre Moses Andiwoh (yellow) & Tony Mutua

Shirts for the arbiters

Jonah Langat from Mombasa (left)

Clear favorite Harold Wanyama (right) plays a blitz game against Nsubuga Haruna

Playing hall for the Prestige section

Vincent Limo v Sanjana Deshpande while Arbiter Duke Michieka looks on

Vincent on his way to victory

Harold Wanyama - will he be going to Las Vegas?

There you go readers - a quick and dirty review of the 2015 Satellite Millionaire's Chess Tournament taking place right here in the heart of Africa.

Watch this blog for some more news this weekend.

Kenyan Chess On The Roll!

I am very happy that there has a flurry of activity in Kenyan chess over the past few months. 

Next weekend brings us the Millionaire Open at the iconic Kenyatta International Conference Centre which is located smack in the middle of Nairobi.

I have now registered for that event and hope to bring you loads of photos and snippets of what is going on there next week.

In the meantime chess was on mainstream TV this week.  See clip below from Citizen TV.  The show as for a whole 30 minutes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3T_7ImRpF8&feature=youtu.be

Kenya Millionaire Satellite Chess Festival

You will all recall that last year the Millionaire Chess event was held in Las Vegas.

Nairobi will be the host for one of the satellite events and fireworks are expected for this event.  The first prize is incredible - fully paid ticket, accommodation, meals and to take part in the Las Vegas Millionaire Chess Open from 8th to 12th October 2015.

The other two events for Africa are set for Lagos and Johannesburg later in the year.

This event promises to live up to its expectation from round 1 to round 8.  There will be no sharing of points, being kind to each other, deciding to share the cash fund.  There is no cash fund for the first prize.  Only one ticket is being given out.  I am told that the event is open to all so you can expect the Ugandans by the busloads and I will not be surprised to see Egyptians and Zambians coming for this event.

This event is promoted by Kasparov Chess Foundation and organised by Chess Kenya.  One will remember from my earlier posts that Kenya was firmly  and solidly in Kasparov's camp during the 2014 FIDE elections.

I guess we are now enjoying the fruits of that support.

Here is the poster for you to salivate.

I will as usual be there to bring some exciting morsels of information and some photos!

Nairobi Hosts The 7th FASU Games

This post was meant to have been done more than 9 months ago.  Work pressure and being disorganised means that you now are forced to read stale news.

Chess was one of the games that was part of the festival and I bring you some photos of the event.  The sad thing was that this event was hardly reported in the newspapers and Kenyan chess players did not seem so interested.  We had some strong players from Egypt here and really we needed to interact with them much more.

I am part of the guilty crowd that did not take much time and effort to meet our brothers and sisters who came from various African counties.

At least enjoy the photos.

Poster of the event