GM Bassem Amin wins Hoogeveen Open
GM Bassem Amin of Egypt made Africa proud when he won the 22nd edition of the Hoogeveen Open.
Photo caption –GM Bassem Amin of Egypt in action. Photo credit https://www.hoogeveenchess.nl/en.
The Hoogeveen Chess festival ran from 20th to 27th October 2018. The event took place in the small town of Hoogeveen, Holland. Link to the official website – Hoogeveen Chess.
The Open section had a total 80 players from 12 federations. A novel idea was used where the top 4 players after round 7 went into a knock out stage.
The prize fund in this event was Euro 10,000 with the winner going home with Euro 4,000.
GM Bassem Amin was once again in scintillating form once again. He had scored an impressive 8 points out of 11 games during the 2018 Batumi Olympiad. This also included a draw against former World Champion GM Vishy Anand of India.
GM Bassem Amin is also the 2018 Africa Individual Chess Champion. He has won this event 5 times!
Link to the above story can be found here – GM Bassem is 2018 African Champion .
The Hoogeveen festival had 3 other events besides the Open one. These included two Amateur events which had over 150 players. The other interesting event was a match between the following players.
Peter Svidler – Sam Shankland.
Jorden van Foreest – Vladimir Fedoseev.
In the above matches Svidler and Fedoseev were victorious.
The interesting thing about this event we had another player from Africa taking part! It was none other than our charming sister WFM Christine Namaganda from Uganda.
Christine Namaganda in Hoogeveen
WFM Christine Namaganda was an invited guest at the Hoogeveen Festival. She played in the Amateur 2 section where she scored 4 points out of 8 rounds.
Christine also took some time to promote the game and even managed to play a simultaneous against some youngsters. She also visited several schools in the towns of Hoogeveen and Meppel.
WFM Christine Namaganda was part of the Uganda team to the 2018 Batumi Olympiad team. She also played in the 2017 Commonwealth Chess Championship held in New Delhi, India. You can find that story here – Interview Christine Namaganda.
Sponsors for Hoogeveen Festival
The sponsors of this prestigious event included Gemeente Hoogeveen, Provincie Drenthe, & McDonald’s.
Sub-sponsors included !Pet, Van Regteren, Wemmenhove Zuidwolde, & Rabobank.
