Veteran chess player comes to Central Region League’s rescue with K250 000 sponsorship
Veteran chess player, Mpilo Mizere has come to the rescue of Central Region Chess League (CRCL) by injecting K250,000 as sponsorship for this month’s Rapid Chess Tournament which the league is organising since January scheduled at Kamuzu Institute of Sports.
The tournament is one of CRCL’s development plans in order to expose and improve the overall level of play within the country in the drive to produce highly rated players on the international stage.
This will be fourth senior open tournament to be organized by CRCL this year and all the previous three played tournaments were won by Candidate Master Alfred Chimthere, who is also Chess Association of Malawi (CHESSM) publicity secretary.
The first tournament organized in January was sponsored by CRCL, the second in February was sponsored by LsBerg and the third, played during Easter, was bankrolled by CHESSAM.
In his remarks, the sponsor Mpilo Mizere, who has recently been residing in Zambia, said he is happy to be part of chess development in Central Region and Malawi as a whole.
“It’s always great to see organizations and individuals financing chess tournaments because finding sponsors for chess is not always easy,” he said. “As a veteran chess player, I always want us to be active and we remain thankful that despite all the challenges, the game has managed to find sponsors over the years.”
He also applauded CHESSAM for managing to send players to participate in international tournaments where Malawian players are attaining international ratings.
“For Malawi to produce chess Grandmasters, we need more local and international tournaments as well as a lot of support from various stakeholders, which will give our players more exposure and improve the overall level of play within the country.
“We are bound to produce the country’s first International Master or even GM very soon,” said Mizere, who also partners other veterans in sponsoring club tournament under CRCL.
In his response to the sponsorship, CRCL general secretary, Zex Mwale applauded Mizere’s gesture, saying he has the passion to develop the sport.
“We always appreciate Mpilo’s passion for chess and we urge more veterans to emulate his example if CRCL is to improve on national level.
“We aim to be a dominant chess regional league to produce as many national team representatives through such tournaments that always unearths new talent,” Mwale said.
Meanwhile, Malawi’s South Africa-based chess genius, Joseph Mwale’s current international rating is at 2274, just short of 126 to reach the required 2400 in order to attain the International Master title, which is just one step closer to clinching the coveted Grand Master title.
Mwale, who is a Fide Master that he attained at the World Chess Olympiad that was held in Batumi, Georgia last year, can earn the International Master title outright even before reaching the required 2400 rating mark if he can win an African Zone Games title or being in the top three African individual games.
Just this month, he represented the country at the Zone 4.3 Games together with Woman Candidate Master (WCM) Ellen Mpinganjira held Antananarivo, Madagascar but he only managed to win four games, drew one and lost four to earn 4.5 points from 9 rounds.
Since his return from Batumi, he has played a lot more games at local South African events where he has over the years won over 60 games and he leads the all-time winning chart.
He now aims at reaching 2400 rating and the International Master title by end of next year before aiming for the Grandmaster, which is at the international rating of 2500.
“The Madagascar Zone 4.3 Games was great, thanks to Chessam for making it possible that we should participate. One thing I realized there is that I can and shall win that Africa zone tournament one day. So I will be working on a long term training plan to achieve that dream,” said the Malawian chess genius, who trekked to South Africa where he earns a living on chess but mostly in coaching kids.
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