#TuksChess: TuksChess team completes USSA hat trick

Posted on December 09, 2019

Tuks's chess players can honestly claim to have ruled the roost during the USSA Tournament in Grahamstown.

Not only is the team the overall champions for the third consecutive year. UCT who was the USSA champions from 2012 to 2014 is the only other team who has been able to notch up a hat trick of victories.

Both the men's and women's teams won their respective categories setting new records. The men notched up 61 points bettering UCT's score of 60.5 which they set in 2014 while Tuks's women scored 35 points. In doing so, they improved on their previous best score of 32.5. The team's overall total score of 96 is also a new record.

Still, that is not all. Tuks also claimed 35 of the 36 gold medals that were up for grabs. Nine players, the most of any university, qualified to play the national closed chess tournament which is the trials for the World University Chess Championships. 

Tuks's women all placed in the top ten, which is another first. Cora Mak was the best player. The two sisters Rene and Ineke de Beer respectively finished 7th and 8th while Marni Oberholzer was tenth. 

Alex Maredi was Tuks's best male player being second overall. Chris Kolver was 7th, Daniel Marais 8th and Mfundo Masiya 12th.
A total of 330 players (196 men and 134 women) from 23 universities were in action.

Godfrey Kgatle (TuksChess administrator) can be forgiven should he use the phrase "I love it when a plan comes together" to boast a bit with his team's success. He ascribes it to a good team spirit. 

"The chess tournament became more than only a game of brains but also a means of developing interpersonal skills and long-lasting contacts. Players from different disciplines such as science, sociology, engineering, commerce and actuarial science had a common goal, and that is to bring pride to Tuks's coveted 'Stripes'."

Robert Sapolsky, Stanford professor of neurology and neurosurgery, claims that throughout an intense multi-day tournament, a chess grandmaster could burn up to 6,000 calories a day.

According to Kgatle, some players found that they lost weight.

"Many associate "burning calories" with exercising, but calories are simply a unit of energy that you can get from eating. Your body, including the brain, needs the energy to perform to its best. Therefore we encourage players to take up chess for the multiple benefits players can acquire during the game."

- Author Wilhelm de Swardt

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