Glitch forces chess tourney postponement
Calistus Kolantsho | Tuesday February 23, 2016 13:32
BCF spokesperson, Keenese Katisenge said when the competition began they realised an error with the scoring at the end of the first round.
The championship will now be played on March 5 and 6. She said efforts to rectify the problem took longer than expected and an unanimous decision to postpone the tournament was taken following consultations with the participants.
She said participants registered well on time during the week and the process was completed on Saturday. The competition started around lunchtime and after round one, it was realised that there was an error with the scoring. She said that meant the names had to be re-entered manually. Katisenge said they wanted to avoid games finishing late and spilling into the next day.
“The decision was taken taking into consideration the time allocation required for the event as well as the international standard of proposed breaks between rounds. The event was to be played in a nine round Swiss individual format with 25 minutes - with time increment time allocations per player making it impossible to play all the required rounds in one weekend after the technical glitch,” she said.
She said the rescheduling of the event will inevitably affect other BCF events.
Meanwhile, BCF will launch the Metropolitan sponsorship at the National Stadium tomorrow. The federation has received P120,000 from Metropolitan, the same amount as last year.
Katisenge said the sponsorship had grown over the years and the popularity of the tournament has reached almost every part of the country. The tournament is played over three stages being; the first and second qualifiers, and then the finals. The first stage of the event will be open to all players from across the country and will see the top 23 players from the Open Section and top 17 women qualify for the second stage where the defending champions will join them. International Master, Providence Oatlhotse is the reigning men’s national champion while Woman Grand Master, Tuduetso Sabure, is the women’s defending champion.