7-Year-Old Mpho Bowers Breaks SA Chess Record. 7-year-old Mpho Bowers from Gauteng has broken a South African chess record that has been there for quite a while.
7-year-old Mpho Bowers from Gauteng has broken a South African chess record that has been there for quite a while. The chess champion has won on 33 successive tournaments, he is also the champion of 43 games. The primary school learner has recently won title number 12 in 2019 at the Etienne Lewis Tshwane closed tournament at the Leriba Hotel in Centurion.
Mpho Bowers also received trophies at the Tshwane Chess Merit Awards. The 7-year-old is the youngest representative of the junior team and the highest graded player under 8. He is going to represent South Africa at the African Youth Chess Championships in December at Namibia. He will also be guiding the Tshwane under-8A team at the the South African Junior Chess Championships at the Birchwood Hotel in January 2020.
He learned how to play chess when he was only three years of age. He was taught by his father, who just showed him the basic moves, and then when he was five years of age he started to go into tournaments. Mpho says, “I love chess, it helps my brain to think!” The 7-year-old often practices at the GoForChess Academy in Bryanston, tutored by the previous South African chess champion Clyde Wolpe. The father says Mpho Bowers uses chess as an outlet since his mother passed away. “He was three when his mother passed away. He went through a very difficult period after that and almost lost his own life. Chess is just an outlet for him to explore how he can calculate,” says the 7-year-old’s father.
by Alexandra Ramaite
