Fide Master Harold Wanyama will be among the 100+ players that will take part in the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championships.
The annual event is set to commence on 26th December in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and end on 30th December.
No East African, let alone, a Ugandan has ever competed at this event. Wanyama who is ranked fourth in both the Rapid and Blitz in East Africa is going to be the first to do so.
The FM will fancy his chances of upsetting the odds as he knows a thing or two about such competitions.
Not only did Wanyama earn his FM title straight from an Olympiad event (2012 Istanbul, Turkey), Wanyama who has been to eight World Chess Olympiads also finished higher than Hikaro Nakamura, five-time US champion in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2016 on board two.
He also won bronze at the All African Games in the Rapid section in 2019, so he knows what it means to mix with chess royalty.
But in Samarkand, he will come up against the creme dela creme. The event is headlined by Magnus Carlsen, the five-time World champion who is also the defending champion in both Rapid and Blitz.
Rapid and Blitz chess is fast or speed chess in which each player is given less time to consider their moves compared to what classical chess time controls allow.
Courtesy Photos
