Mwango jumps into 2nd position jr chess tourney

October 8, 2012

Fide Master Lorita Mwango, Zambia.

By SHAMAOMA MUSONDA -
ZAMBIA chess FIDE Master Lorita Mwango jumped into second position of the on-going Africa Junior Chess Championship after drawing her round-eight match against South Africa’s highly- rated Jacqui Grobbelaar on a day the two other Zambians won their matches.

The two other envoys in the championships Sekelani Tembo, who is in the boys’ Under-14 category, and Jonathan Thomas in the boys under-12 category won their games on a good day for Zambia at the games.

Mwango, who is in the girls’ main event (the Under-16 and under-18 combined category) fought for a dear half-point in the competition to overtook another South African Monica Jansen Van Rensburg to move onto 5.5 points.

for her enthralling exploits, Mwango would in the ninth rounds move to Board-Two from board-three against yet another South African at the competition, Lillian Chen, who lost her previous round match to new Africa Junior Women Chess champion Shrook Wafa of Egypt.

Wafa is leading Mwango by two points on 7.5 while Chen is ninth on four points and a win for Mwango would see her finish second.

Another Zambia chasing medals at the championships is Thomas who beat Priyav Chandna of Botswana to jump into third place with five points and can hope for a good result in the closing round to finish on the podium third position.

Thomas would close his competition with a date against another Tswana in Reginald Sibanda who is seventh on board-three also knowing too well that Egyptian Adham Fawzy, who has a clean eight points from eight rounds, is ready champion.

The third Zambian at the championships, Tembo, recovered from two straight losses that threw him from fifth position down to 11th with this win over Kingsley Mokwena of Botswana to rise to four points and 10th on the log.

Tembo, however, is just 1.5 points off the pace set by yet another Egyptian Mohamed Zayan and will hope for good fortunes when he goes in the ninth and closing round against Zimbabwe’s Sifiso Ncube who is also on four points.

A win for Tembo would bring him to five points and probably shoot him up into top half of the 13 member group while leader Zayan would have to win his match against bottom placed Kingsley Mokwena in order to starve off a strong challenge for the title from Angolan Cristiano Aguiar, who is joint leader on 5.5 points.

Aguiar closes the competition with a game against Takunda Mudzingwa of Zimbabwe while third placed Sachin Modi, who is just half a point off the pace, plays Chess Master Abhiram Sasitharan of Botswana.

Other players on five points, South Africa’s Andre CONRADIE and Egypt’s Mark Yasser, close the tournament with matches against Kenyan Srinjay Mmukhopadhyay and Chris Kolver from South Africa respectively.