Adventures in Kenia (Part 1)
Auteur: Dimitri Reinderman
Translated from “Schaaksite” (http://schaaksite.nl/page.php?id=2853) . Translated by Nikolai van Beek
End February I received a mail from Africa: Whether I was interested in training the Kenyan top chess
players. Mails from Africa are not new to me: they come often with financial proposals of princes and
daughters of deceased generals, but after a bit of googling I learned that the sender previously had
organized the internet match Kenya-Wageningen. So, it was possible that this was not spam. I
responded that I was interested. After some back and forth correspondence we agreed that I would
come to Kenya during the second half of July (Bad timing, but the Tour de France had slipped my mind)
for four trainings sessions, a simultaneous exhibition, a blindfolded game and a visit to a chess club. And
for a safari of course!
I expected at my arrival in Kenya to meet my contact person, Nikolai van Beek, a Dutchman, who since a
few years lives and works in Kenya. Leaving the luggage hall (after having waited an hour in line for my
visa) I heard indeed my name being called, and a whole delegation was waiting for me.
A grandmaster visits Kenya; that is a very special event, which people –actually, chess players- like to
witness! Despite the late hour we first visited the most expensive bar of Nairobi where I had to socialize
(“as Dimitri started sharing his tales of meeting Kasparov, Karpov, Anand and the likes over the board")
with as result that I finally checked into my hotel after midnight.
The Jacaranda-hotel had provided a room free of charge and that was laudable, but it was not good
enough for a plug on trip advisor. Personnel at the reception were friendly but not useful in problem
solving, such as a missing bath plug. Breakfast was excellent for inhabitants of the Commonwealth sausages, white bean in tomato sauce- but being Dutch I regretted that there was no cheese. The worst
problem was that the TV decoder was not working, which made me miss the most beautiful stages of
the Tour de France. Nevertheless, except for the first night I slept well over there.
On the first day a press conference was planned at two o’clock. I was told that there was a lot of
interest for my visit and I had visions of a room full of journalists firing lackluster questions at me:
“When did you start playing chess? How many moves can you think ahead?” A little like at earlier press
conferences that I have done. It was somewhat different though: It turned out that the press
conference was held in the same place where we had lunch and not in a separate room, but together
with other drinking and eating guests and the many journalists where represented by one camera crew,
which instead of starting at two, first sat down for an extensive lunch (I was already familiar with the
phenomenon "African time"). Afterwards I was allowed to explain how I was going to improve the level
of Kenyan players and what the effect of my visit would be even while I was not the right person the
answer the latter.
How did I want to improve the level of Kenyan players? I had decided to concentrate on endgames:
rook endgames, pawn endgames and planning in the endgame.
(This is actually you tube in his original article-Nikolai)
This was partly laziness (all the material was already in my possession), but I felt that it also would be
very useful. This turned out to be true. The average Dutch junior knows the most important theoretical
endgames by heart, but this area turned out to be underdeveloped by Kenyan players, whose ratings yet
were over 2000. This is understandable, access to chess books is more problematic (even if this is less of
a problem these days due to” torrent sites”) and in addition, they rather play blitz than study. However,
with the trainings sessions they were very happy!
Part 2 to follow, with amongst others pictures of dangerous animals!