The duel in the Paul and Mike national chess championship begins today when Zomba chess-sniper, Chiletso Chipanga, date Lilongwe\u2019s Petros \u2018Razorblade\u2019 Mfune at Cross Roads Hotel.<\/p>\n
The two chess archrivals are on top of their game and are expected to play in a 12- game spanning three weeks.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s Paul and Mike match is a repeat of last year\u2019s competition when Mfune came from behind to dethrone Chipanga as the competition\u2019s champion.<\/p>\n
It is expected to be a very closely contested match as both players have hit top form of late.<\/p>\n
Just in the last month, Chipanga lifted the Mphande-Muleso Open championship while Mfune won the Mdina Open.<\/p>\n
Chipanga, who is widely known for his trademark gambling tactics on the chess board, has told the press that he would tease the defending champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast time I gave him so much freedom to attack me, but this time I will attack the Razorblade till he becomes blunt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Mfune, renowned for his brutality in the endgame, said he was ready to defend his title, and would punish his challenger.<\/p>\n
To qualify as a challenger, Chipanga beat six other top players, including celebrated Fide Master, Gerald Mphungu, in a candidate\u2019s tournament that took place last week.<\/p>\n
The Paul and Mike match is sponsored to a tune of K600,000. The tournaments organising chairperson, Mayeso Mphande, said it would be a tough contest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The duel in the Paul and Mike national chess championship begins today when Zomba chess-sniper, Chiletso Chipanga, date Lilongwe\u2019s Petros \u2018Razorblade\u2019 Mfune at Cross Roads Hotel. The two chess archrivals are on top of their game and are expected to play in a 12- game spanning three weeks. This year\u2019s Paul and Mike match is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6498,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495\/revisions\/6498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}