EMERALD Mushore was crowned the Minerva Zimbabwe Chess Open 2021 Champion today and walked away US$1 000 richer, a gold medal and a trophy.
He shrugged off stiff competition from Spencer Masango and Roy Mwadzura as he finished the tournament with six wins and two draws from eight games.
Mwadzura and Masango were tied on six and a half points, with the former claiming silver and the latter bronze.
The four-day event was graced by players from all over the country, with Bulawayo bringing a strong contingent in a bid to break Harare teams’ hegemony.
Straight from being crowned the Botswana Open champion, Masango was expected to provide stiff competition for Mushore, who is also the reigning champion of the Easter Chess tournament.
Their match was one of the eagerly awaited pairings, and it lived to its billing.
Masango’s match is built on grinding down opponents until they get mentally fatigued. However, Mushore did not give him the chance to take the game down to the wire finishing him off in a classical Mushore way.
It looks like physical tournaments bring the best out of Mushore instead of the online ones.
The quality of chess on the show was just outstanding, bringing back the old glory days of the Zimbabwe Chess Open when everything would come to a standstill, the tournament was the only show in town, and everything else did not matter.
The Zimbabwe Chess Federation put up a tournament that was well organised on the spacious fourth floor of Joina City in the capital.
Another serial winner like Mushore, Linda Shaba was crowned champion in the Women’s Open category, pipping Christine Makwena to the number one spot.
Both Shaba and Mukwena were tied on six and a half points, but Shaba did enough to be crowned the Women’s 2021 Minerva Zimbabwe Open champion.
Shaba was happy to land the Minerva Zim Open trophy and was a gracious winner who paid tribute to her compatriots.
“I played with almost everyone who is at the top, and 90 per cent of them are national team players. Therefore it was a tough tournament,” she told EnterSportNews.
Shaba also paid tribute to her South African based coach for helping her win the Minerva Zimbabwe Open Chess tournament.
“I would like to thank my South African based coach, Eric Takawira. He has been helping me to analyse games and prepare for this tournament; he is a really good coach,” said Shaba.
On the toughest opponent she faced during the tournament, she singled out her training partner and friend Kudzanayi Charinda who scooped the bronze medal.
“My biggest threat was Kudzanai because we play a lot of games online together, so we know each other game in and out. It becomes difficult when we play each other in a tournament because we know each other too much,” she said.
The women’s game has been growing in leaps and bounds, and Shaba wants to see more women take up the sport of chess.
“I would like to encourage more ladies to take up chess, and it’s a very good logical sport. There is a lot more thinking that goes into the game than physical activity. More ladies should be encouraged to take up chess,” she added.
