By Praise Majawa:
Team Malawi endured a difficult start to the World Chess Olympiad in Uzbekistan after both the open and women’s teams suffered defeats in their opening matches.
The competition started on Tuesday and runs up to September 27 in Samarkand.
In the open section on Wednesday night, Malawi open lost 3.5–0.5 to Greece, while the women’s team suffered a 4-0 defeat against the Philippines.
Malawi’s open team, which is seeded 121st among 207 participating teams, faced the Greeks who are ranked 19th in the starting rankings.
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The top four seeds in the open section are the United States, India, Uzbekistan and China.
Despite the defeat, Candidate Master (CM) George Mwale managed to secure a draw against a Greek Grandmaster.
The other players who represented Malawi in the opening round were CM Chiletso Chipanga and Joseph Nyambalo.
In the women’s section, Malawi is ranked 131stamong 191 participating teams.
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India, Georgia and Kazakhstan are the top three seeds, while the Philippines are ranked 42nd.
Malawi women’s team comprises Ellen Mpinganjira, Tupokiwe Msukwa, Rachel Jailosi, Shalom Kapende and Anny George, with Linda Jambo serving as team captain.
At the previous Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary, Malawi finished 120th in the open section.
Chess Association of Malawi (Chessam) spokesperson Francisco Mwangupili said they remain confident that there will be an improvement.
“The start has indeed been disappointing. But our expectations were not that high, mainly considering the strength gap between our team and the ones we were playing against. We were hopeful, but we did not have very high expectations,” Mwangupili said.
