By SHAMAOMA MUSONDA –
CHESS Federation of Zambia (CFZ) president, Lewis Ncube has landed the Africa Chess Union (ACC) top position after the elections held during the 2014 World Chess Federation (WCF) general assembly in Tromso, Norway.
The elections held on Tuesday evening that saw Ncube given a four-year mandate were, however, marred with confusion characterised by infighting by two factions that saw one camp supporting the candidature of re-elected WCF president Kremlin Ilyumzhinov and the other of defeated chess legend, Garry Kasparov.
With the assembly splitting into two camps to vote, Ncube emerged winner after polling 23 votes against zero for his challenger Lekan Adeyemi of Nigeria, who enjoyed a 16 to one win vote from the other house but could not beat the CFZ chief who polled 24 to 16 votes overall.
Meanwhile, it was also a good day for the women chess team that, despite not winning the top prize at the 2014 World Chess Olympiads, managed to claim a gold medal in Category D of the competition that ends today.
The team feat will not be affected by round-11 results as winning gold was largely due to them posting an invaluable 3-1 win in Round-10 over Thailand which took them to 10 points.
At the start of the competition, the Zambian team as ranked 109 in the world which classified the team to be in Group D but at the end of round 10, Zambia’s standing had risen to an impressive 72, which is 37 places better than initial ranking.
The men will, however, not have that privilege as they have not moved up enough to get a medal as their current position of 74 is just 15 places better to the 89 they started on while countries like Zimbabwe climbed the ladder in Group D.
Back to action on the boards, the Zambia women fought tooth and nail to pick a fifth win at the games to beat Thailand 3-1. Chess Master (CM) Lorita Mwango drew her game against a higher rated FIDE Master (FM) Chanida Taweesupmum and so did Constance Mbatha against a CM Worasuda Atthaworajed.
Linda Hamoonga beat Chitaporn Prateungsukpong on board-three with Yvonne Saina battered Chananchida Vongvastana into submission for a convincing 3-1 win on board four and the team was set to close their games against Bangladeshi.
For the men, the Stanley Chumfwa led group dug deep into their arsenal to force a 2-2 draw against the fancied Ireland with the toast of that game being International Master (IM) Stanley Chumfwa who defeated Grand Master (GM) Alexander Baburin in an exciting match.
Daniel Jere ending his game against Sam Collins in a stalemate but Chitumbo Mwali fell to Mark Heindenfeld and then the draw between Richmond Phiri and Colm Daly meant the gamed ended all square.
This puts Zambia at 11 points and meets Moldova, who are equally on 11 points, in the last round in a tournament that China leads with 17 points, one better than Hungary while France, Ukraine, Russia, the USA and four others are on 15 points.
