Tough guys from Mozambique
A friendly match between Russian diplomats and chess players from Mozambique took place on June 28
A new match continued a good tradition between the chess club of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and teams from African countries. The event was organized by the Moscow Region Chess Federation together with the Council of young diplomats of the Ministry alongside GATINGO International Association (Africa – Russia) and “African initiative” information agency. This friendly match was dedicated to the 50-th anniversary of the foundation of bilateral foreign relations.
The event had an “Arena” format, lasted an hour and a half while the time control was 5 minutes + 3 seconds per game. The final result included the results of 20 best players of each team. The Mozambique team won the match 486:284. The players played 306 games during the designated time and made 22 thousand moves and it is worth mentioning that similar to the match against the Togolese team the number of draws was very low – only 5%.
The Russian team comprised the employees of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and specialists working in the Ministry offices abroad. The players from Mozambique represented the national team, officials from the national federation and local chess amateurs.
According to the final results the best players among the Russian diplomats are:
Veniamin Yarkin, Councilor of the Russian Embassy in Thailand (37 points);
Vyacheslav Petrachev, the Ministry management department (25 points);
Dmitry Kostyuchenko, councilor of the protocol department (23 points).
The best players from Mozambique are:
Cossa Remigio Enoque, student in engineering (42 points);
Alberto Nelinho, employee (42 points);
Abel Fernando Viandro, employee (31 point).
The match was broadcasted in Russian and English. The Russian audience could listen to the best Russian commentator, GM Sergey Shipov. He commented on two platforms at the same time:
English spectators could watch the Togolese champion CM :
Not only chess is getting younger but commentators as well. Chess fans from RSA could listen to 12-years old Michael Schwartz:
Michael…better call him Misha as, although he is from South Africa, but belongs to a Russian family who moved to that country about 30 years ago and started a new life far away from their home.
The chief arbiter of the match Konstantin Bazarov described the match in his own way: “The match was full of tough but honest fight. I would like to mention 100% result of Veniamin Yarkin. Seems like he went to do his best that day!”
The Russian senator, multiple world champion and the Moscow Region Chess Federation president Sergey Karjakin: “We’ve had the second match within our young but very important project “Chess diplomacy in Africa”. I am sure that we will increase the scale of friendly tournaments and involve more countries from Asia and Africa”.
The Mozambique Chess Federation president Milton Botao was satisfied to mention: “We did not expect the match to create such a boom among chess amateurs in our country. There were lots of participants and all of them were simply eager to play against our Russian friends. The event turned out to be a great one. Sometimes the leaders of the two teams showed a real thriller on their boards, it was so exciting to see it in action”.
The winner of the tournament Cossa Remigio Enoque who dominated over his opponents and showed an attacking play said: “The game had ups and downs and one had to pull his point out of nowhere in difficult positions. It is always necessary to have a close watch on the board and the Russian diplomats used all our mistakes, attacked bravely and showed real open chess”.
The Russian charge d’affaires Sergey Neskorozhenkov mentioned the importance of such competitions for the purpose of humanitarian collaboration.