St Louis Chess Open - Fide master Haruna Nsubuga the winner |01 March 2018

Ugandan Fide master Haruna Nsubuga took part in the St Louis Chess Open on Saturday and won the adult category.

The competition took place at the St Louis district administration and was divided into two categories ‒ male and female senior as well as male and female junior (under-16).

There were 19 chesslers in the senior (adults) category and 16 in the under-16 division.

In Seychelles on one of his many stops in Africa, Fédération internationale des échecs (Fide) master Haruna Nsubuga who has 2170 points on the Elo rating system, completed Saturday’s competition with 7 points in the male senior class after winning all his seven games.

Second was Seychellois Michel Zialor with 6 points and his Elo rating stands at 1650, and in joint-third position were Sergey Prokopyev (1777) and Timothy Kate (1450) with 5 points apiece.

Seychellois candidate master Dericka Figaro (1640) won the women’s senior category with 4 points and her mother Rachelle Hoareau (1500) was second with 3.5 points. In third place was Dania Duprès (1300) with 3 points.

Mohamed Arfan (garnered 7 points to claim top spot in the male junior (under-16) division ahead of Harish Pillay (second with 6 points) and Jean-Jacques Eulentin (third with 5.5 points).

In the female junior (under-16) category, Liza Adeline triumphed with 7 points, relegating Roysha Mougal (4 points) and Elisha Dufrene (3 points) to second and third places respectively.

It is worth noting that Seychelles is the 11th country Ugandan Nsubuga visits on his tour around Africa to share his knowledge with chesslers from other countries.

He got his Fide master (FM) title at the end of the Africa Zone 4.2 Chess Championship in Cairo, Egypt in November 2014.

It was candidate master and best female chess performer of the year 2017 Dericka Figaro who made contact with master Nsubuga while in Uganda in December last year to take part in the 2017 Rwabushenyi Memorial Chess Championship played at the Forest Cottages, Nagurua Hill, Bukkoto in the outskirts of Kampala. She finished joint-third with Ugandan candidate master Christine Namaganda with 5.5 points apiece.

The Seychelles Chess Federation would like to thank the St Louis district administrator and everyone who contributed to make the Seychelles-Uganda chess exchange and the tournament a success.