Maurice Kambukwe 

The Namibia national chess team delivered master moves to progress to Division 3 of the ongoing 2021 World Chess Federation (FIDE) Online Chess Olympiad held over the weekend. Action will continue this coming weekend as the Namibians eye qualification to Division 2.

The chess Olympiad is a worldwide online international competition in which hundreds of participants from more than 100 different countries compete for top honours. The event started on Friday and will run until 15 September on FIDE’s chess.com site.

This past weekend saw Namibia competing in Division 4, which consisted of teams with the lowest federation performance ranking, and emerged from a pool of 12 teams to secure a spot in Division 3, which takes place this weekend. 

Namibia won nine of their 11 matches played. For this weekend’s Division 3, a total of 10 teams will be divided into five pools and each pool will play in a round-robin system over nine rounds, with the top three teams from each pool qualifying to Division 2.

Speaking to New Era Sport yesterday, Namibia Chess Federation president Charles Eichab, who is also competing, said he was impressed with the way the team performed over the weekend, urging them to again go out full force and book their place in Division 2.

“It was a great performance from the team. Everyone on the team is hungry to win and that’s what we want at this point. We are looking forward to replicating the same performance this coming weekend,” he said.

The team:

Open

Goodwill Khoa

Eichab

Open Reserves

CM Mclean Handjaba

Bernhard Schwarz

Women

Lishen Mentile

Nicola Tjaronda

Women Reserves

Maria Niilenge

Lure Horn

U20 Open

Manfredo Gaoseb

Reserve:Henry Gaiseb

U20 Girl

Keisha-Cathriona van Wyk

Reserve: Jamie-Nicole Beukes

Team captain: Milton Eiseb

- mkambukwe@nepc.com.na