Belize’s National Champion Earns International Chess Master Title

Belize has made its biggest move yet on the international chessboard. National champion Alfred Awe has become the country’s first FIDE Master after a standout performance at the forty-sixth FIDE Chess Olympiad in Uzbekistan. The lifetime title marks a breakthrough for a chess community that once considered international master status beyond its reach. Team Belize celebrated a second milestone when Kenneth Perez earned the title of Candidate Master. As the delegation prepares to return home, Awe says years of developing players and strengthening the sport locally are finally paying off.

 

Alfred Awe, Chess FIDE Master

“Chess has several master titles. You have the highest, which is the Grand Master, and then International Master, then you have FIDE Master and Candidate Master. Now for, in the history of Belize, we’ve never gotten any master titles ever, so I’m the first one to have gotten a Candidate Master during this event. And on this penultimate round, one of my colleagues, Kenneth Perez, he also,  obtained the Candidate Master title, which was pretty exciting.  And on the last round,  I reached the threshold needed to get the FIDE Master title, so the second title. That was pretty exciting. We used to hear about these candidate masters, FIDE masters, and they were like these mythical chess players. And to us it was something we would never be able to achieve in Belize, but we’ve grown the federation to the point where we can compete in these international events and we’ve, me and my fellow teammate, we’ve shown that it’s possible for us. So it’s a pretty big achievement. It was a hard-fought match against another candidate master. So I had to, I had to beat a candidate master to become one on Independence Day, which was pretty exciting.”

 

Belize’s team competed against players from more than two hundred nations, making it one of the largest chess events ever held.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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