Chess Olympiad qualifiers: Eagles on course after round five

Candidate Masters (CMs) Alexis Ruzigura and Godfrey Kabera, both from Eagles Chess Club (ECC), ended last weekend’s rounds in the ongoing qualifiers for the 2016 Chess Olympiad in a comfort zone – with 5.0 and 4.5 points, respectively. Only five out of the 10 contestants in this fierce contest will make the national team for the Olympiad, in Baku, Azerbaijan from September 1 to 14. But with only four more rounds to play next week-end, the duo’s station means they are confident of a place in the open section of the national team for the 2016 Chess Olympiad. The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament where teams from all over the world compete. The ongoing qualifiers are an individual contest. A win earns a player one point while a draw is half a point. It is too early to predict who takes the other three slots but two other ECC players, Eugene Mugema Kagabo (3.5) and Fidele Mutabazi (3.0) are currently third and fourth, respectively. Their club has made it known it wants to lead the national team. And the players are well aware of the threat of a loss in the next two rounds at Classic Hotel, in Kigali. Fifth on the table standing is a tough outsider, CM Maxance Murara (2.5), of Knight Chess Club, followed by ECC’s Alain Patience Niyibizi (2.0), the reigning male national champion who astonishingly suffered shocking defeats in his last two encounters to drop to sixth in the table. Two years ago, Niyibizi, Kagabo, Ruzigura, Murara and Kabera qualified for the 41st World Chess Olympiad 2014 in Tromsø, Norway. But Kagabo would, later, be replaced by Rugema Ngarambe on the final team because of a last minute passport hitch. Qualifiers for the ladies section, a seven-round affair, will start on May 29.

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Chess Olympiad qualifiers: Eagles on course after round five