Drum Majors
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2019 African Championships: Round #7
Round #7:Adly storms into the lead… Rakotomaharo upsets Bellahcene, moves in joint 2nd with Amin…Shrook held, Latreche closes gap OPEN There is no odds-on favorite to win the 2019 edition of the African Individual Championship. The story of the day has to be the young IM from Madagascar Fy Rakotomaharo…
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2019 African Championships: Round #6
Round #6:Amin on a roll, crushes Fawzy… Adly back in the huntShrook devastating field, 6/6 OPEN Another exciting round of chess. Three of the top seeds are back on course and are sitting atop the field with 5/6. The situation may favor Ahmed Adly since he has already played three…
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2019 African Championships: Round #5
Round #5:Amin beats Adly moves back into joint first… Shrook Wafa on 5/5 OPEN GM Hesham Abdelrahman has exited the tournament after five rounds. The 2016 African Champion suffered three losses and one can only imagine that something is not well with the Egyptian player. Takaedza Chipanga of Zimbabwe also…
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2019 African Championships: Round #4
Round #4:Adly and Shrook win… both lead the field on 4/4 OPEN Tunisia is sizzling right now. It is not the heat of the weather, but it is the action at Hotel Caribbean. After the top seed went down yesterday, the player who beat lost to Ahmed Adly leaving him…
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2019 African Championships: Round #3
Round #3:Tournament heats up… top seed Bassem Amin goes down! OPEN It was “Fire on Board” at the 2019 African Championships as the top two boards saw titanic struggles lead to decisive results. Amin-Ballahcene and Hamdouchi-Adly represented three different generations of chess. GM Bassem Amin battling upstart GM Bilel BallahcenePhoto…
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2019 African Championships: Round #2
Round #2:Tense battles in Open Section… Lorita Mwango breaks through! OPEN One of the truths about African chess is you never really know how strong a player from the continent is. The idea that Africans play in so few international tournaments is lost on the fact that the continent is…
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2019 African Championships: Round #1
Round #1: Tournament starts off with a few nicks Venue for the 2019 African Individual Chess Championships OPEN In general the top seeds prevailed… except for one result. IM Rodwell Makoto got a taste of home cooking with a loss to an unheralded Tunisian Jmila Omar. Nevertheless, it is a…
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Renewed Energy @ Chicago Open!
The Chicago Open has been one of the marquee tournaments for two decades. It is the first major of the summer season and generally attracts a healthy mix of professionals, norm seekers and scholastic phenoms. However, what made this tournament different was the buzz created by the online battles that…
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Vasif Dararbayli wins 2019 Chicago Open!
Illia Nyzhnyk and Vasif Dararbayli face off in round 7.The game was drawn. Aided by a strong 5.5/6 start Vasif Dararbayli held off a field of strong GMs to win the 2019 Chicago Open. Perhaps the key win was his 6th round win over then-co-leader Jeffery Xiong (2015 Chicago Open…
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The Chess Journey of GM Maurice Ashley
I met Maurice Ashley nearly 30 years ago at the 1989 U.S. Open held just outside of Chicago at the Rosemont Hyatt. At this time, I had already started the groundwork for a chess network for players of African descent. During a graduate-level marketing class, I was able to write…
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