I know you must be wondering why I am doing a story on Uganda
while this blog is meant to cover Kenyan chess?
The simple reason is that we had our own Ben Magana who
decided to forgo the Kenya National Championship and take part in this grueling
event which is run over two weekends (5th, 6th, 12, 13th
December 2015. This meant that Ben had
to travel twice to Uganda to participate.
Ben Magana ended up with a very respectable joint 3rd
position with 6/8.
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| Top 15 players in the Open section out of 89 players |
In the Ladies section world famous Phiona Mutesi was top
with 7/8 on tie break with Gloria Nansubuga who also had 7/8. Regular traveller to Kenya Christine Namaganda
was 3rd with 6/8. Missing in
action was WFM Ivy Amoko who is currently residing in Nairobi, Kenya.
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| Top 16 players in the Ladies section out of 27 |
A book has been published on Phiona Mutesi titled “The Queen
of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl's Dream of
Becoming a Grandmaster", by Tim Crothers.
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| Top 16 Junior players out of 24 players |
A total of 140 players took part in this event which was
split into 3 sections; Open, Ladies and Juniors.
The event was sponsored by the Civil Aviation Authority of
Uganda in honour of their past their former Director Airports the late Cyril
Rwabushenyi who was a former Chairman and founding member of the Uganda Chess
Federation. The sponsorship package was
Uganda Shillings 10.6 million (KES 330,000 or USD 3,300) making it one of the
biggest events in East Africa.
This event was the first one to select the top 30 players who will now enter a second phase to select the Uganda team for the 2016 Chess Olympiad in Baku, Azerbaijan.
I do have to apologise that I have not photos of this event
despite my many emails and requests to get some.
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| Caricature of Ben Magana - by Were Studios |
I will however bring something historical about Kenya and Uganda.
In most cases Uganda players come to Kenya and carry most of
the loot back to Uganda. Did you know
that in 1997 the reverse happened? This happened when Humpherey Andolo who now
resides in Bristol, United Kingdom cruised his way to victory in the NRM Pepsi
tournament. This was covered in a story
in our magazine called “KENCHESS” November-December 1997 issue . The story was aptly called “Chaos in Kampala!”
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| KENCHESS magazine |
We congratulate IM Arthur Ssegwanyi for winning this event
and to Ben Magana who did Kenya proud by coming out 3rd.
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