En passant - Chess

Esperanza

Il y a bien sûr quelque chose de délicieusement nostalgique dans cet hommage à un ancien champion d'échec (photo en noir et blanc), alors qu'aujourd'hui un logiciel étale le moindre champion du monde, aux échecs ou au go, qui est encore plus complexe.

L'on pourra dater ce moment de l'histoire humaine où les langues les plus complexes parlées à la surface du globe (le russe, l'islandais, le mandarin…) produisaient, par l'habitude donnée dès l'enfance à des combinaisons syntaxiques retorses, des générations de champions mondiaux aux jeux de stratégie. L'on pourra aussi ajouter que ce moment particulier a pris fin dans les premières années du XXIe siècle - lorsqu'il a fallu commencer à apprendre aux élèves des écoles (dès le primaire) le code informatique.

Haiti – Students face their opponents in the last chess tournament before the national competition.

Reigning national woman chess champion Marie Faustine Shimwa, 22, this month became the first Rwandan female to get the coveted World Chess Federation (FIDE) rating.

The Knight Chess Club player becomes the 22nd FIDE rated player after the world chess body considered results from her performance in the Zone 4.2 Africa Chess Championship held in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, in April.

Shimwa said: “I am so happy since I achieved one of my goals. But this is another challenge as well as motivation for me.”

To get a FIDE rating, an unrated player must compete against five rated opponents and get any draw or win, in a rated tournament.

Her first such major triumph came when she trounced Alain Patience Niyibizi, the reigning male national chess champion, during the 2016 Rwanda Open, early this year.

For two successive years, the third-year Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering student at the University of Rwanda (College of Science and Technology) has kept hold of the national female chess champion crown.