Mansour Gbedo Sy wins 2020 Senegal Open Championship
Mansour Gbedo Sy won the 2020 Senegal Open Championship with a score of six points out of seven rounds. The event took place from 4th to 6th December 2020.
The Senegalese Chess Federation were the organisers the and the venue was the Cours Sainte-Marie de Hann, in Dakar. The seven-round Swiss tournament brought together 46 players. It was open to all Senegalese and foreign players residing in Senegal for at least two years. The event served as a qualifier for the Senegal National Championship.
Ten players made it into the Senegal National Championship, which has been rescheduled for March 2021. The National Championship was initially set for late December 2020 but had to be postponed due to the CV19 Pandemic.
1. Mansour Gbedo Sy – 6 points.
2. Nadezda Marochkina – 5½ points.
3. Wara Diop – 5 points.
4. Sékou Aransbène Badji – 5 points
5. Robert Kaunduma Diatta – 5 points
6. Al Hassane Wane – 5 points.
7. Bernard Lesbros – 5 points.
8. Amadou Lamine Cisse – 5 points.
9. Mouhamadou Mourtada Fall – 5 points.
10. Mouhamadou Falilou Dioum – 5 points.
Nadezda Marochkina finished second and became the winner in the women’s category. Kéba Seck, a student of the Première class at Cours Sainte-Marie, was the best junior player.
Chess facts about Senegal
The highest ranked player in Senegal is Benard Lesbros at 1928.
Senegal has only 5 rated players.
Amadou Lamine Cisse is the President of the Federation Senegalaise des Echecs which was registered in 1974.
Senegal have participated in seven Chess Olympiads (1982, 1986, 1988, 2010, 2014, 2016 and 2018).
Interesting facts about Senegal
The name Senegal –t is thought to have come from the Wolof phrase ‘Sunuu Gaal,’ which means ‘our boat.’
Dakar is the capital of Senegal and French is the official language. The country has about 16 million inhabitants.
In January 1959, Senegal and the French Sudan became one to form the Mali Federation, which became fully independent on June 20, 1960 from France. This did not last long and Senegal and Mali broke apart into separate nations.
The flag of Senegal has three equal vertical bands of green, yellow and red, with a five-pointed green star in its center.
Senegal is home to the tallest, and arguably most controversial statue in Africa, the African Renaissance Monument. The monument was completed in 2010 and is bigger than the Statue of Liberty.
The Wolof are the largest single ethnic group in Senegal at 43%.
A Griot or Jeli is a West African historian, storyteller, genealogist, teacher and more.
The local tribes such as Mandika and Wolof all celebrate this all-wise and all-knowing spirit even after they die. Griots when they die are buried inside the center of a sacred baobab tree but not underground.
Le Lac Rose, or Lake Retba, is a giant pink lake about a 90-minute drive from Dakar. The pink hue is caused by its high salt content and an algae that produces a red pigment. It has a higher salt content than the infamous Dead Sea.
