Prince: “the Zambian future chess”

Prince: “the Zambian future chess”

 By WALUSUNGU SILWEYA

Lusaka.

ZAMBIA is known to produce great talents in different sports especially football but even minor sports such as Chess are not an exception.

Prince with medals at home

One such talent is a 22 year old Mulenga Prince rated 2186 on International rating and currently ranked 10th in the country.

Prince born on 11th November 1992 started playing Chess at a relatively old age of 12 when he was a grade 8.

 "I learnt how to play Chess in 2005, I was 12 years turning 13 when I knew the game, a very good local player by then by the name of Godwin Kosamu taught me the moves and i quickly fell in love with the game", Prince recalls.

It was not easy for Prince to establish himself as a top player in the country as it took him some years to firmly establish himself.

" I had faced a lot of challenges in improving my play especially that there were few players in my hometown (Chambishi) to train with hence my progress in Chess was not that fast compared to talents such as Simutowe and Kayonde at the same age", Prince states with a smile.

Prince got national recognition when he won National Schools Chess Championship held in Luanshya in 2009 with an impressive score of 6/7 which qualified him to play African Junior Chess Championship (AJCC) which was held in Cairo-Egypt.

  

"I had been making improvements bit by bit, I had won, Luapula Provincial Schools Championships in 2007 with 7/7 when I was in grade 10 during my days at Mansa High School, I came Joint 4th during National Schools Chess Championship in grade 11 with a score of 5/7 in 2008.

“ I became Kitwe District Schools Champion, Copperbelt Province Schools Champion and National Schools Champion in 2009 when I was at Mukuba High School based in Kitwe", Prince recalls with pleasure.

Prince started competing in Local tournaments more often when he completed high school, the most notable being Copperbelt Open, Zambia Closed and Harvey National Chess Championships.

His play was still not considered amongst the best as he could consistently produce average results against the country's top players during tournaments, players such as IM Gillian Bwalya, IM Stanely Chumfwa, IM Daniel Jere, IM Kelvin Chumfwa, FM Richmond Phiri and FM Andrew Kayonde proved no match for Prince in his early chess development.

 “You see, for gold to be gold, it has to pass through fire, so I believe my loses against the top players were preparing me to be a stronger player, of course I could be hurt losing to same guys over and over but I knew it was just a matter of time before I caught up with them and for sure I have now caught up with them as at now", Prince states in a convincing manner.

Prince at copper-belt university 

Despite having difficulties in producing great results in local tournaments, Prince continued to demolish his junior counter-parts and this was evidenced when he won National Junior Chess Championship with a score of 8/9 in 2010 which was held at Fatmols Lodge in Ndola.

The Championship qualified him to play another African Junior Chess Championship which was to be held in Tripoli, Libya but the Northern African Revolution made the tournament to be changed to East-London in South-Africa the following year.

Prince says he did not feel nice when Chess Federation of Zambia (CFZ) said they could only find tickets for two players, Douglas Munenga and Epah Tembo instead of 4 air tickets which would have included him and Lorita Mwango hence he did not participate in 2011 edition of African Junior Chess Championship.

Prince took a break from Chess when he enrolled at the Copperbelt University to study Bachelor of Science in Forest Management but could sometime take time to participate in only few selected tournaments.

"I will be honest, it is very difficult to combine Chess with studies because Chess on its own demands a great amount of time for one to really master the intricate of the game, so it was challenging to combine chess with studies thus I took a break from Chess and only played a few tournaments here and there due to academic pressure such as Assignments, Tests and Exam Preparations", Prince states.

Prince at Lusaka's OYDC

Despite taking a break from Chess, Prince was crowned Copperbelt University Chess Champion with a score of 4/5 in 2013 and later on went to win National University Chess Championship in the same year with a perfect score of 7/7.

The two titles gave him the morale and motivation to improve his game. Prince has recently seen his play improve drastically and has a few accolades to his Chess career, the recent being Southern-African University games (CUCSA) Championships where he won Gold medal for individual board brilliance as well as a Silver medal for team event for mother Zambia last year.

Apart from Winning medals, Prince went on to come out strong Joint 4th and 8th on Bucholz with a score of 7.5/11 during Zambian Open international Tournament ahead of National team players such as IM Daniel Jere, IM Kelvin Chumfwa and FM Andrew Kayonde, a tournament won by IM Gillan Bwalya.

He went on to come out Joint 3rd during Copperbelt Open chess tournament tieing with IM Chitumbo Mwali and FM Douglas Munenga, a tournament which was won by IM Kelvin Chumfwa.

 "I was playing very good chess in 2014, I knew I was getting to the top, high levels of discipline and hard work really paid off, I was given an International rating of 2186 by FIDE

Kelvin Chumfwa who were behind me played an International Tournament, Zimbabwe Open where they gained a few rating points so am now 10th in the country and still first in Copperbelt Province", Prince explains calmly.

Prince says the ultimate goal is to become a Grandmaster like GM Amon Simutowe but that since the journey to success is in phases, his main goal as at now, is to be an International Master then proceed from there.

Prince with champion Kayonde and friends.

Prince says he is the future of Zambian Chess along with fellow young players such as FM Douglas Munenga, Micheal Kaoma, Elias Musonda and Alinaswe Sichone who are now strongly competing with long time senior players.

He recently participated in National Championship where he came out clear 6th with 5/9 narrowly missing by half a point to be in the national team, 2015 National championship were won by FM Andrew Kayonde who defended the title he won last year.

Prince who will be graduating later in the year at the Copperbelt University in the faculty of BSc Forestry says the corporate world needs to come on board and help minor sports not only Chess but others as well if talent is to be unleashed.

Prince believes doing sports help to combat social vices such as Illicit Sex, Drugs and excessive alcohol drinking which are common in youths and as such calls for the government to improve the sports sector in the country by pumping a lot of money in the sector.

END…