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GAYP World Qualifier Tournament 2023

I was very happy when I learned that the next GAYP World Qualifier Tournament 2023 for men would take place in Turkey, in the resort city of Antalya. The winner of the tournament will receive the right to a match with current World champion Matteo Bernini of Italy. At the same time in Antalya were to be held the World championships for women and youth. I have already been to Turkey once, but only 3 days in Istanbul during an excursion from Bulgaria. The previous two years were very difficult for me and my wife Nadja and we decided to come to Antalya a week earlier in order to have a rest before the tournament and to get acquainted with the place.

Checkers tournament was held in Turkey for the first time and was the result of joint efforts of Turkish Draughts Federation headed by Ibrahim Ismailov and World Checkers-Draughts Federation (WCDF) - Alex Moiseyev. It was a brilliant idea, as it provided an opportunity for African athletes to participate in the selection. Previously, when tournaments were held in America or Europe, they had big problems with visas. Thus, Pandora's box was opened, which usually leads to events with irreversible consequences. According to ancient Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman created at the behest of Zeus as a punishment for people for stealing fire from Prometheus for them. Before that there were only goddesses. Curious Pandora opened the forbidden box from Zeus, after which people on earth had problems …

Initially, the federations of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan also announced they would take part in the tournament. However, unfortunately, for financial reasons at the last moment they refused to participate.

On the very eve of the tournaments, just two months before their start, the whole world was shaken by terrible news - an earthquake of colossal force in Turkey and Syria, which killed about 60,000 people overnight. Deepest condolences to all the victims. Fortunately for Antalya, the tragedy passed them by. There was no destruction there.

Immediately after the tournaments parliamentary elections were to be held in Turkey, and there were fears that there would be unrest. Even there we had no trouble at all.

I will focus in more detail on the men's tournament, where I myself took part.

So, 19 participants from 11 countries took part in the men's tournament. Among them are 7 Grandmasters. First of all, these are the most eminent people in the Checkers - the current 3-move World champion Sergio Scarpetta from Italy; Ron Suki King, ex-champion in two versions, who dominated Checkers for about 20 years and the most popular man in Barbados and multiple World champion in all three versions Alex Moiseyev…

Let me remind you that in Checkers three World champion titles are played in three different versions - GAYP (Go As You Please), 3-move (the first three half-moves are determined by a draw) and 11-men Ballot (11 pieces and with a draw of the first three half-moves, here Alex is the current World champion).

South Africa (RSA) was represented by two federations and therefore 4 players. These are already well-known grandmasters Lubabalo Kondlo and Melikaya Nonyukela. Lubabalo won the 2018 GAYP World title by defeating Italian Michele Borghetti, and last year he lost a match to another Italian Matteo Bernini and lost his title. Two new players also arrived from South Africa, Vuyani Mazibuko and Lukhanyo Dyanibokwe, who had not previously taken part in international competitions.

Two more new faces on the World stage flew from Kenya to Antalya - the blind Checkers player Daphton Mwaboti and Crispin Odhiambo, an extremely popular player in his country, known as Goj.

Of the Grandmasters, Jack Francis from Barbados and the strongest European player after the Italian World champions Shane McCosker from Ireland should also be noted.

A curious status of the country was represented by Dennis Pawlek. This is a German, living in Thailand, who performed under the Czech flag. It's just that Germany had already announced two participants, while the Czech Republic, which had paid the fee, had two vacant seats.

Unfortunately, the odd number of participants, as well as the presence of one weaker player, put the participants of the competition in clearly unequal conditions. 8 people by the number of rounds received a double win without a game. Simply sporting happiness has always been an important component of the successful performance of many players.

Before the start of the tournament, a great Checkers enthusiast and promoter from Pakistan, Iqbal Ahmed Salarzai, created nice promotional business photos (Posters) of all tournament participants and conducted a blitz poll on the Internet among checkers fans and supporters. Who will be the winner of our tournament? According to their forecasts, the places were to be distributed as follows: 1. Crispin Odhiambo; 2. Alex Moiseyev; 3-4. Sergio Scarpetta and Lubabalo Kondlo; 5. Ron Suki King; 6. Melikaya Nonyukela.

But life showed a different result. The tournament ended with the complete triumph of African athletes who took the entire podium! Gold went to Melikaya Nonyukela from South Africa, silver got Crispin Odhiambo from Kenya, losing only by odds to the winner, and Vuyani Mazibuko (South Africa) won bronze. Sensation! Who would have thought that Sergio would be only 4th, Alex - 8th, and Ron Suki even 13th. Against this background, my modest 12th place looks pretty decent.

But let's start everything in order, I want to show the chronicle of the tournament so that readers can follow the dynamics of this historical event. Alex Moiseyev has done a tremendous job analyzing all the games of the tournament. In his brief review, you can read about almost all of the mistakes, released opportunities, and curiosities of the participants. Jim Loy transcribed and digitalized all the games. Dr. Richard Beckwith, WCDF president, officiated all three Checkers tournaments.

Chronicle of the tournament

Day 4. Round 8

Interesting and dramatic events, especially for me, occurred in the last round. Lapin won both games against Karny. It's every player's dream to win twice in the last round in the Swiss system. Immediately you fly up the crosstable.

McCosker released the win again, this time from King.

And also Oliphant missed the victory over Layne.

The principal fight between Goj (Kenya) and Dyanibokwe (RSA) ended with the win of the Kenyan. As a result, Goj caught up with the leader. There is a fierce rivalry between the South African and Kenyan players, both at the board and among the fans.

Now the first place was determined by additional criteria - coefficients and the result depended on other participants in the competition. And here everything was decided at my board. I was the one who was destined to play a decisive role in determining the winner of the competition. It was the main question of this tournament as well as at the previous World Qualifier Tournament in 2019. Then, in the last game of the tournament I lost for a time the easily won endgame with Matteo Bernini. Matteo, having received a gift from me, caught up with Sergio on points and bypassed him in terms of coefficients. And then the next year, after winning a match against Condlo, he became the World champion.

I played with a blind player from Kenya, Daphton Mwaboti. A draw suited me to stay in the plus zone. The result of our games was extremely important for Goj also from Kenya, as he had a double win over his compatriot. I had never played blind opponents before. It was necessary to play on his handmade board, the fields were lined by hand, the squares were painted in black and white, and instead of pieces there were blue and white corks.

In the first game, my opponent played very fast and I realized that he was well familiar with this variant, but my knowledge had already dried up. In short, I got nervous and the board just floated in my eyes. I could not concentrate at all and calculate the position. I just moved the pieces by eye. All in all, I lost the first game. Of course, I was very upset, as my dreams of a Grandmaster title collapsed and would be postponed for an indefinite period of time.

In the second game I sat as if in a fog, and for about 10 minutes I just looked at the board and thought about the first move. Then in the course of the game I suddenly noticed that I had a shot and I could win a piece. I stared at the board for a long time and did not believe my eyes. I noticed some chaotic movement in the camp of Africans. Winning further was not particularly difficult. The result of this game is notable because it was the only loss of the African player to a non-African and it influenced the definition of the winner of the tournament.

When the odds were calculated, it turned out that Nonyukela was only half a point of coefficients better than Goj (192.5 vs. 192.0). Photo Finish! Lucky the strongest! That's how my miracles in the last games changed the course of Checkers history for the second time in a row! Here is the role of personality in history!…

Selected diagrams. Round 8

So all the medals of the GAYP World Qualifier Tournament went to African athletes: Melikaya Nonyukela (South Africa), Crispin Odhiambo (Kenya), Vuyani Mazibuko (South Africa). By the way, in my previous article last year about the Irish Open 2022 I already wrote that the future of Checkers is in Africa. However, I could not imagine such a dizzying success of African players. Sergio Scarpetta, the reigning 3-move World champion was left without a medal, winning only 4th place. It was especially difficult for him, since almost everyone played against him frankly for a draw. The next places were taken by 5. Vadym Lapin, 6. Lubabalo Kondlo, 7. Jack Francis, 8. Alex Moiseyev.

Final table

Next year should be a match between World champion Matteo Bernini of Italy and Challenger Melikaya Nonyukela. In case of a draw in the match World champion retains his title for the next period. It is interesting to note that the 4 previous matches in a row ended in victories for the Challengers and there was a change of the World champion. Let's see how the match ends for this 5th time.

World сhampionship women

Six women took part in the World сhampionship women. Four of them represented Ukraine. Interestingly, by the will of fate they live in different countries and continents now. Tetiana Zaitseva came from the USA, Nadiya Chyzhevska from Germany, Alona Maksymova from Bulgaria and Anastasiia Glushko from Ukraine. Vitalia Doumesh arrived from the Netherlands and Italy was represented by Viviana Moretto. They played round Robin. The Ukrainian women played the entire set of medals among themselves. And here, as well as in the men's tournament, the winner was decided by coefficient. Nadiya Chyzhevska got the Gold and Silver went to Tetiana Zaitseva (both had 15 points). Bronze was won by Anastasiia Glushko, who took part in such Checkers tournament for the first time - 13 points.

The rest of the participants were far behind and took - 4. Vitalia Doumesh - 7 points, 5. Alona Maksymova - 6 points and 6. Viviana Moretto - 4 points. In my opinion, it would be more fair to decide on the winner in the men's and women's tournaments in a match with a shortened time control, and not by coefficient. But such were the rules of the competition.

Final table

World Youth Championship

A completely new country in Checkers appeared in the World Youth Championship - Hungary, which delegated to the youth competition 6 players at once. That was, more than half of all participants of this tournament. Hungary pays great attention to its youth and wants to instill in them a love for various intellectual mind games. Valeriia Yezhova, who is well-known in her homeland, and Yehor Maksymov played for Ukraine. Two experienced players arrived from Italy. The little son of Tanya Zaitseva and Vadym Lapin, Sasha, only 3 years old, participated for America. This was his first international tournament and hopefully not the last. As expected, the first two prizes went to the Italians. Davide Gemma got the Gold, leaving his compatriot Andrea Peirano far behind, with 28 and 23 points respectively. And the third place was shared by Ukrainian players with 22 points each. The Bronze medal went to Valeriia Yezhova by the best additional criteria.

Final table

Epilogue

During the tournament Alex Moiseyev from WCDF negotiated with the President of the Turkish Draughts Federation Ibrahim Ismailov. They came up with an interesting idea of organizing the combined World championship - Checkers plus Turkish Draughts next year. It all depends on whether Ibrahim will succeed to attract the attention of sponsors from the rich Arab countries of Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and others to such tournament.

My wife Nadja and I had an extremely interesting vacation in Antalya, full of fireworks of new meetings, impressions and acquaintances in Antalya. In the huge hotel Grand Park Lara, where we lived, there was everything for a carefree holiday. That's where we also played our Checkers tournaments. At our disposal, apart from the numerous bars at the hotel, swimming pools and the beach, there were three All inclusive restaurants. We could eat there at any time of the day or night. The choice was such that you won’t even try it in just two weeks. It even became a problem for me, because I wanted to try everything.

During the day the animators amused the hotel guests with all kinds of sports and entertainment programs. And every evening we were waiting for various concerts, live music and dancing. The package of services included access to the beach, swimming pools, as well as a spa with three types of baths - Hamam, Finnish and steam rooms. All this was already included in the hotel price.

As VIP clients (Very Important Persons), my Nadja and I received pink wristbands. The feature of this wristband was the ability to get free all drinks, including alcohol. Interestingly enough, almost all the other participants got yellow wristbands. And they were allowed only non-alcoholic drinks... The coolest thing about the hotel was its Shuttle-bus, which drove the hotel tourists to the beach - 100(!) meters.

A tour of local attractions was organized for the participants of the tournament. Antalya's old town and port are only half an hour away by public bus. And the cost of living in such a first-class 4.5-star hotel was even less than the usual B&B in Ireland. The tournament in Antalya was a big success!

More photos and Mr. Salarzai's posters in the Album

While this my article was being prepared for publication, I received the joyful news that I had been awarded the title of Grandmaster. It was my old dream. Dreams Come True!

New WCDF titles 2023