Kenyan Team To Play Dutch Team Named

The event is a first for Kenya - A chess match between one of the famous Dutch chess clubs and a select Kenyan side consisting of the best six players in the country to be held over the internet. The aim of the event is to uplift Kenyan chess standards via exposure to strong opposition in the form of International Grandmasters and Masters.

The event sponsors are Safaricom and Wageningen Chess Club (of Netherlands). The Safaricom 3G mobile internet connection will be used and will highlight the capabilities of the newly landed fibre-optic cable that will enable fast relay of chess moves over the internet. The playing portal is the Playchess site which is managed by Chessbase, the world's premier chess software distributor.

The organiser for the event is Nairobi Chess Club which is the oldest registered chess institution in the country having been active since 1958.

The Kenyan team, known as the 'Kenyan Simbas', are represented by the the six best players in the country on current form. They are:

1. Ben Magana - The most dominant Kenyan player of the 21st century. He is currently ranked 2nd in the country. Has represented Kenya internationally in 3 Olympiads (World Team Championships), the 2007 All Africa Games where he narrowly missed on a bronze medal, and in the 2007 African Chess Championships where he created one of the biggest upsets in African chess by beating Grandmaster Ahmed Adly of Egypt who is also the reigning World Junior Champion.

2. Peter Gilruth - A naturalised Kenyan he is also the country's most experienced international player. He is currently ranked No. 1 in the country and is the reigning National Champion. He is also the captain of the Kenya Simbas team.

3. Ben Nguku - Is currently ranked No. 3 in the country. His high quality of play has attracted the analytical interest of some of the foremost chess specialists in the world. One of his games from the 2004 Chess Olympiad in Turin, Italy was of such class that Grandmaster Nigel Short (who challaged Gary Kasparov for the World Championship in 1993) analysed it in depth for the Daily Telegraph's famous chess column.

4. Mehul Gohil - He is probably the strongest player to have never represented the country internationally. Locally, he has a reputation for being among the fastest thinkers of the game.

5. Githinji Hinga - He is the fastest rising talent inn Kenya at the moment. A welcome addition ot the Kenyan elite his electrifying style of play is eye-catching.

6. Akello Atwoli - Over the last 2 years Akello has established himself as one of the most succesful local tournament players. He has also improved very fast and was the best Kenyan performer at the All Africa Games of 2007.

The team Kenya Simbas will be facing are the Wageningen Chess Club who have on their team none other than Grandmaster Jan Timman and International Master Afek. Jan Timman is one of the acknowledged legends of the game. He has won the tough Dutch chess championships a record nine times. In 1979, a string of impressive international tournament victories propelled him to the World No.2 spot behind then World Champion Anatoly Karpov. Later on he even challenged for top honours against Karpov in their 1993 World Championship match. Jan Timman is also considered one of the best opening theoreticians of the chess world and has authored several classic chess books.

Wageningen chess club will constitute the strongest challenge Kenyan players have ever face

Dutch Club Wageningen Announces Team To Play Kenya

Wageningen Chess Club have announced a strong line up against the Kenya Simbas in this historic event that is scheduled for 3rd October 2009.

The players are:

Board 1:

Grand Master Jan Timman - He is the former world number 2 and played a match with Anatoly Karpov for the FIDE World Title. Timman won the Dutch Championship nine times. He has for the past two years he played for Wageningen in the National League.

Board 2:

International Master Yochanan Afek – Mr Afek is from Israel and has lived in Holland for a number of years. Afek is a famous endgame composer. He trains a number of chess clubs in Holland and for Wageningen he is both trainer and player.

Board 3:

Chess Master Sander van Eijk - A young and attacking player. Last year he scored his first IM norm. After being a chess professional for one year, he now restarted his studies in Law.

Board 4:

Fred Jonker - A very tactical player. Six years ago he became regional champion and thus played in the semi-final of the Dutch Championships. Jonker works at Wageningen University.

Board 5:

Erwin Oorebeek - A player with a good knowledge of the opening. Oorebeek is a strong correspondence chess player.

Board 6:

To be announced later. There is a high possibility that this place will be taken by Eric Smaling who lived in Kenya in the 1990s and is now a member of Parliament.

The Kenya Simbas line is expected to be announced tomorrow

Safaricom are the main sponsors and are proud to be associated with this historic event that comes a few weeks after the landing of the fibre optic cable in Mombasa. The central technological platform of this event will be Safaricom's 3G mobile internet connection.

The interface is the popular site www.playchess.com which will enable chess enthusiasts to follow the game wherever they are in the world! It is also most likely that there will be a live commentary, which can be read online as the games are being played.

My First Tournament

My first tournament

In January 2004, I played my first tournament. Today, I read my diary and it was de ja vu, back then Atwolli<> could not play in any event, I used to crash him like a cat. Here now is the non-edited version of the events at my first chess tournament.

2^nd veteran pharmaceutical open chess championships 22 to 23, 2004 Jan, Aga khan sports club.

I first heard about the veteran pharmaceutical open championships when I read the Monday standard on a report where Nigel short played blitz games against local players. The excitement of playing in full strong tournament was so high that I could not believe it. The idea of meeting Mathew kanegeni and the likes and giving them a run for their money was unbelievable.

My initial preparation was not that good; I downloaded a few games and planning material and made a 4-day crash course that I did not fulfill. When I left for Nairobi as Burnt Forest chess king on 21^st I was sure I was going to walk way with 6-0.

21^st.

I spent most of the day traveling and looking for the Aga khan sports centre. After getting lost, I finally found it and knew the registration was going to happen the next day. So after many years of playing chess I was about to play in my first ever tournament.

22^nd

I arrived at the Aga khan sports centre before 8, not knowing the chess Kenya protocol, I had had to wait for some minutes before the officials arrived. As guys started arriving, I caught my first glimpse on john Mukabi. The “guys” started playing blitz and analysis; the deep understanding they had of the game amazed me. As the draw was made, I was given a dream pairing just like Man u playing Exeter in the FA cup fourth round, it wad Mathew Kanegeni vs. Edwin Korir in Board.

EVENT: Veteran pharmaceutical open chess championships

SITE: Aga Khan Sports Centre

DATE: 22^nd to 23 Jan 2005

WHITE: Mathew Kanegeni

BLACK: Edwin Korir

OPENING: Siccilian Najdorf with f4.

1. e4 ( after months of preparing for the Sicilian , here was my chance to play my best aganaist the best) 1…c5
2. Nf3 d6
3. d4 cxd4
4. Nxd4 Nf6
5. Nc3 a6
6. Be2 ( the first variation and instead of replying to the moves he plays, my heart is beating, I am so excited and u have used less than a minute so far. May lack of tournament experience is surely showing) 6…e5
7. Nb3 Be7 (I always initially play Be6 before this move, whether it was fear or not I could not tell but it proved to be a novelty.)
8. 0-0 0-0 run away from trouble if you can
9. f4? The move I have always detested, apart from Qc7 I don’t know how to handle it. It was going to be a long day. …Be6

starting off from here are the losing moves, apart from wasdting time this move does nothing at all. My plan was to accelerate thr f5 move so I could play Bd7 but that was not to be. The best plan here is 9…Bd7 10. a4 exf4 11. Bxf Ne5 getting an outpost which white will gladly exchange removing my isolsted pawn and leading to a pretty drawn position.

10. Be3 Qc7
11. a4 Bxb3? Bad move no doubt, it opens up the c file for white to usr.
12. cxb3 Nbd7
13. Rc1 Qa5
14. Qd1 Rac8 the losing move. Failure to analyse, plan and adrenalin combines to bring this disastrous ending.
15. Nd5 Qxd1
16. Nxe7 Kh8
17. Rxd1 Nxe5
18. Rc7 Nc5
19. fxe5 Nxb3
20. Bf3 Nbd2
21. Bxd2 Nxd2
22. exd5 h6
23. d7 Rd
24. Rc8 Nxf3
25. gxf3 Rxc8
26. dxc8 >Q Kg7

1-0

Michael Jackson: A Tribute

By Edwin Korir

A genius? No doubt.

From a young boy born in Gary Indiana; singing Ben for his rat pet in 1972 to teaming with Quincy Jones to produce Thriller the best selling album of all time then trying to find his childhood in Neverland but eventually his facial surgeries, a skin ailment, serious weight loss, and god knows what else made him look like both a vampire and a mummy.

That was MJ, the musical genius who eventually turned to be a freak just like Bertrand Russell or Leo Tolstoy. I did not at first enjoy MJ’s songs but when I was in F1 back some time, I heard just bit it witch made me enjoy his songs. Eventually I started listening to his songs and billle jean and the way you make me feel made me feel like I was a teenager in the 80’s. His musical genius is unquestionable but like all other geniuses his social life was not exemplary.

Wacko Jacko as the British tabloids called him changed the music world, he transcended race before tiger woods, Oprahy Winfrey, and finally Barrack Obama. My friend Samuel Chebii must have been devastated for apart from his chess has lost his two favorite musicians in a year; Lucky Dube and now MJ.

For a while he was “king of pop” no two hours in classic 100 would go with out a MJ song playing. No soul night at the Simba Saloon in Carnivore would be complete with out one of his songs. Before MJ came James Brown and The Beatles after him, there is none. Changing from a handsome black man to an old white woman one has to ask which was more imaginative his music or his persona.

This young black kid who made his name with the Jackson Five eventually married Elvis Presley daughter and bought the Beatles song catalogue which meant every time one of their tunes was played he received half the royalty.

He made trademarks of the music industry; his dances especially his moonwalk, his jeweled glove and his record setting sales made him Mwenyewe. He acquired a 2,700acre ranch with funfair and zoo attached just like the Masai Mara, which he named Neverland after the fictional Nirvana of peter pan.

He sold more than 100 million albums in his solo career; Jua Cali has only sold 200,000. His tours were the biggest on the planet they averaged over 200 million per tour. However, whatever he did MJ just reenacted his dance as a central figure of long racial horror show. To the uplifting view, enunciated after his death by the likes of Rev. Al Sharptorn, he was a Tran racial icon, a black person whom whites took to their hearts and blackness came to seem incidental.

Then his darker phase began. Constantly he was confronted with charges of child molestation. He was energetic, charismatic, and supremely gifted, but sexually unassertive unlike swaggeringly black male performers from Joe to Jay Z. In 1993 MJ settled a child molestation charge for 22 million dollars and retreated to Neverland only venturing forth it seemed, for more cosmetic surgery or skin whitening treatments.

With the money he had made, he blew away more than 1 billion dollars in 20 years. Where the money went is not clear, though the 6 million dollars binge in a single store. Recorded by Martin Bashir in his 2003 documentary , suggested retail therapy on an imperial scale, even Moi wasn’t that extravagant.

This ultimately led to his financial problems, but MJ was in complete denial of the financial reality until he was shown an affidavit. In 2005, he decamped from Neverland and went to the Gulf of Aden at the invitation of the heir apparent. In 2007, the prince joined a long queue of litigants after MJ. The prince had proposed MJ to write an autobiography and compose a song for the hurricane Katrina victims to enhance MJ’s finances without him having to do anything much in public.

Everyone agrees that MJ was anything but a basket case by now. He then moved to Ireland where he prepared new tracks for the 25’Th anniversary of Thriller. He then relocated to Las Vegas where the only option of him solving his financial problems was a come back tour.

Randy Philips the CEO of AEG then set up the London tour, witch incidentally Mehul had tickets to. After what Randy called a “bony Hug” Jackson and his entourage which now consisted of one bodyguard had managed to hold on to Neverland and the Beatles song catalogue.

The come back was scheduled for London in the O2 arena where he was scheduled to perform in 50 shows. MJ’s health was now a concern his sin cancer and being pushed around in a wheel chair clutching a parasol like a mad geriatric.

MJ’s hope of a come back and that of 800’000 fans including Mehul, must have been that their thrust in pops most charismatic but accidental prone peter pan wouldn’t turn out to be a grand illusion after all.

Before that, MJ had remaked himself as American dream of innocence and belovednesss. His constant face surgeries and skin bleaches made him confusing. Just like the skeletal, pale faced zombies he danced with in thriller, when you watch it today, it appears to be a whole stage full of Michael Jackson’s, the real one now the least familiar looking, the most unreal. When he died, he was eulogized like an angel with Kobe Brayant, Al Sharptorn, Mariah Carey e.t.c.

But as an artist he was a genius, Jackson and his legendary producer Quincy Jones fused disco, soul, and pop in a manner that can be heard everyday in a station in Kenya or all across the globe. His best hits “billie jean” and “don’t stop ‘til you get enough” never sound outdated.

Then night before he died he was rehearsing for the O2 tour, people around him were wondering if he was really up to it. He was 50 years old and past his puer aeternus, he had health problems and his peak was 15 years ago.

Whatever his life felt like from the inside, it was manifestly the work of a genius, whether you want to call it a triumph or a freak show.

MICHAEL JOSEPH JACKSON

1958 to 2009

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Random Thoughts

1. In the recently concluded Kenya Open it was more like Nairobi open. Where are all those other players from ouside Nairobi??
2. Saif Kanini is the only player ever to win an Olympiad medal(silver) for kenya in 1980.
3. Where is Mathew Kanegeni?
Blessed june to you all

African chess

Check out this upcoming website by Robert Gwaze http://www.chessafrica.com/

Kenya Open 2009

After much haggling and uncertainity the kenya open was held over Madaraka day weekend.

Dolf Beltz won the event with 6.5/7, the new comer in the kenyan chess scene trounced veteran kenyan chess players.

Gilruth, Wangombe and john mukabi on 5.5 points. Ugandan was reresented by mulambe. Mehul withdrew after round 6 when a dispute with mulambe over the touch and move rule.

Chess kenya must be commended for organizing the event although they should not ambush people with unplanned events.

25 players were selected for next phase of olympiad qualifiers.