A short summary on chess in Eritrea

Kenya Chess Masala

March 7, 2017

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A short summary on chess in Eritrea

The Eritrean Chess Federation is the governing body of chess in Eritrea which was registered in 2001.

Logo of the Eritrean Chess Federation.

In the early days the Netherlands Embassy sponsored two chess master to visit the country to promote the game of chess. This was a powerful stimulus for the game in the country.

Eritrean Chess Federation then received a major boost in May 2015 when the President of African Chess Confederation Mr Lewis Ncube paid a visit to the country accompanied by GM Ahmed Adly of Egypt.

To kick off the visit GM Ahmed Adly played a 21 game simultaneous on 15^th May 2015 at the Nyala Hotel. In attendance was a big delegation from the Eritrean Chess Federation including a number of chess fans.

GM Adly Ahmed during the simultaneous. Photo credit unknown.

In the end the final result of this GM Ahmed Adly v Eritrea match was 20 wins and 1 loss. The only loss was to Eritrean Champion Kibrom Weldegebriel. GM Ahmed Adly is a star player from Egypt and has a number of accolades. These include being the World Junior Champion (1997), African U20 Champion and the first Egyptian GM in history.

Kibrom Weldegebriel has won the Eritrean National Chess Championship three times. He was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1987 and who moved to Eritrea in 1993. He is a graduate of Eritrean Institute of Technology and currently working at Halay Technical School.

From left Lilay, Samuel, Amanuel, Adam, Delegate of Ministry Sport ,Mr Semere President of Eritrea Chess Federation, Kibrom holding trophy ,Napoleon, Biniam and Ahmed. Photo during the 2015 Eritrea National Championship.

Eritrean children playing chess.[/caption]

Eritrea National Chess Champions

A summary of the Eritrea National Chess Champions is shown below

Classic Chess Championship

2009 -Berah Kibrom

2011-Debesai Zerabruk

2012- Berah Kibrom

2013- Samuel Merhawi

2014- Kibrom Weldegebriel

2015- Kibrom Weldegebriel

2016 Kibrom Weldegebriel

The result of 2016 Eritrean Classic Chess Championship are shown below.

1 – Kibrom Weldegebriel 13.5 points.

2 – Biniam Araya. 12.5 points.

3 – Tesfalem Bereket. 11 points.

4 – Sham Mehari 11 points.

5 – Samuel Merhawi10.5 points.

6 – Lilay. Weldu. 9.5 points.

Baku Olympiad

Eritrea ended in 166/180 in the 2016 Baku Olympiad. The result may look depressing but one needs to consider that this was their first Olympiad outing and the federation is still young compared to other federations. For example Kenya Chess Association (now known as Chess Kenya) was registered on 22nd September 1976!