In pic… battle of the Zambians… Prince Daniel Mulenga (right) vs FM Geoffrey Luanja on board 1..Round 8 Open Section..Easter Open 2018 POSB Causeway Harare.
Easter Open 2018 at POSB Causeway Harare…Congrats to Zambians; Geoffrey Luanja and IM Gillian Bwalya for winning the Zim 2018 Easter Open with 7.5pts out of 9 rounds!
Congrats to our Zimbabwe young stars Tapiwa Chikwavaire, Blessing Murasiranwa a UZ Medical student for coming joint 3nd on 7pts together with Timothy Kabwe (ZAM) and Pudungwane Lesole (BOT)…this is brilliant!!
Over 110 players were in the Main Open Section. Other sections were the Ladies section and Junior U14 section.
Here is what the sponsors Kasparov Chess Foundation Africa (KCFA) said about the event…
By Graham Jurgensen (KCFA)
What should have been an exciting finale to the 2018 Zimbabwe Easter Open was slightly marred by what turned out to be a significant number of defaults in the final round. The most important of these took place on the second board where Zimbabwe’s Emarald Mushore failed to arrive for his game against IM Gillan Bwalya from Zambia.
A relatively quick draw was then agreed on board 1 and this was enough to see Zambia’s Geoffrey Luanja lift the trophy on tie-break ahead of IM Gillan. His victory was still very well-deserved as he had lead the tournament virtually from start to finish.
Zambia’s Timothy Kabwe rounded out the all Zambian top three ahead as he finished ahead of two promising local students in the form of Tapiwa Chikwavaire and Blessing Murasiranwa. Botswana’s Pudungwane Lesole also won his final round game to end the event on an excellent score of 7/9. These last three players will be particularly pleased with their performances which earned them between 42 and 57 rating points for their efforts.
The highest rating gain of all was an impressive 113 points however and these were garnered by local player Wayne Mujuru who scored 5/9 playing off a FIDE rating of 1620.
On the lady’s side, the event was duly won by Zimbabwe’s WCM Kudzanai Charinda who secured the point she needed to record an impressive total of 8/9. She ended just half a point ahead of Tatenda Zengeni who pushed her all the way by securing an excellent 7.5 points.
The stand-out performance on the ladies side was probably the finish of Christine Makwena who defeated Malawi’s Desiderata Nkhoma in the last round to score 7/9 and place 3rd whilst playing off a rating of 1411. She earned herself the bronze medal and 98 ELO points from the tournament and has certainly announced herself as a force to be reckoned with in the future.KCF Africa would like to thank the entire team at the Zimbabwe Chess Federation for their outstanding effort to make the event a great success. ..
