Match “Nairobi vs Ixelles”

Following the tradition started 17 years ago, NCC embarked in a new international online match.
Although 12 members initially registered for playing an overseas online match against the Belgian team of Ixelles Chess Club (ICC), only 11 took actually part in the event.

Relatively young, ICC is a chess club from Brussels created in the early 1990. Although they have just over 100 members, it’s a very active club which organizes rapid and blitz tournaments twice a week.

Incidentally, one of their members is IM Richard Polaczek who lived in Nairobi in the late 1970s and was member of NCC. Interestingly, Richard (at the age of 13) was the winner of the first Kenya Open held in 1979. Those of you who usually play our online tournaments on Chess.com will surely be familiar with the name. The reason is because every year NCC organizes the “Richard Polaczek Cup” honoring his contribution to our club.

It’s worth mentioning that this match has been possible thanks to our member Boniface Kathurima who was member of ICC years ago and provided the contact with Richard.

Sunday, Jun. 7, 6 pm -Kenya time- / 5 pm -Belgium time-, was the agreed time for starting the games.
All games ran online on lichess using a time control of 25 min + 10 s increment, and we used FIDE ratings to arrange pairings.
Every participant played 2 games (Black & White) against the same opponent.

Also additional conditions agreed in pre-match arrangements were:

• In round one NCC would play the white pieces and would prepare and send the first challenges

• After first game a short break was suggested to allow players to refresh and refocus on the next game

Favoring Ixelles, the final score of the match was 9 – 13.

All ICC participants were punctually online and the match ran quite well with players enjoying the experience. Inevitably some hiccups occurred, mainly due to inexperience of some players:

• Victor joined his first game 60 minutes late while Noreen joined the match 30 minutes late

• After joining 40 minutes late, Hollye set up a challenge with ‘correspondence’ time control. Fortunately, both players proceeded quickly to conclusion and games finished in less than 1 hour

• Although Viyan registered for playing the match five days in advance, on Sunday he was out of town without access to lichess. Because of that he couldn’t participate. His opponent showed great sportsmanship and offered not to count those games for the final score.

• Satya played only one game. After losing it, he decided to resign the second without playing. To justify his decision, he messaged his opponent informing that he preferred not to play because there is no online arbiter

Final Results

When in 2009 NCC organized an online 6-board match against Wageningen Chess Club (The Netherlands) a tradition for international online matches started.
Now, 17 years later, and in 5 years, NCC has played 17 online international matches with more than 10 boards each time.

Being founded in 1958, Nairobi Chess Club is the oldest chess club in East Africa, and also leader in approaching not only chess to people, but also approaching people through chess.