Every time Ivy Amoko visited the home of her uncle, a former Ugandan national chess player, when she was young, he would always get out the board.
“He was encouraging. ‘Come let’s play’. I just did not have the interest,” recalls Amoko.
Today at age 29, though, she is not only Uganda’s, but east Africa’s highest rated ladies chess player, with a Woman FIDE Master title, awarded by the World Chess Federation, to her name.
While Queen of Katwe, the film about inspirational Ugandan slum girl turned national chess champion Phiona Mutesi, starring Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, is currently captivating audiences around the world, Amoko is the country’s top female player.
But the story of the lawyer, a warm and vivacious woman, has a different narrative to Mutesi’s.
“I’ve been very privileged,” admits Amoko, who grew up in Uganda’s capital Kampala with her father, an ambassador, and her mother, a judge.
“I was always okay, financially I never really lacked.”
Despite this, Amoko stresses her success in the game “doesn’t come easy”.
“It didn’t come from a platter, definitely,” says Amoko, who also won a scholarship to university to study law.
Chess in Uganda was first played seriously in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until 1972 that the country’s Chess Federation was formed, according to Vianney Luggya, the body’s current president.
Three Ugandans later teamed up with other chess enthusiasts, mainly doctors from the country’s biggest hospital, Mulago, in Kampala, and the game spread.
“In the early days chess in Uganda was played without reference to theory,” says Luggya, adding the first guide to be shared among players was a photocopied chess book given to a Ugandan as a wedding gift.
Several tournaments were played in the mid 1970s and the federation started publishing a chess magazine, Checkmate.
It was Damian Grimes, a British priest who ran a popular college in the east African nation between 1967 and 2000, who is credited with introducing the game into schools.
“We could not persuade any girls to take part,” said Fr Grimes, now retired, speaking in 2013 about the early days of chess in Ugandan schools.
“Gradually, however, things developed and by the late 1970s and early 1980s it had gone up to something like 30 or more visiting teams including girls,” he says.
Today an annual school’s chess tournament named in Fr Grimes’ honour is still held across the country.
“All the current crop of national team players have at one point or another participated in this event,” says Luggya.
It was years after Amoko’s uncle, Joachim Okoth, unsuccessfully tried to pique her interest in the game in the mid-1990s, that her university in Kampala announced they were holding competitions.
“There was no-one going, so I decided to volunteer,” says Amoko, who began playing in 2008.
“But it was obvious I did not know what I was playing.”
She took lessons every day after class, and practiced “a lot”.
By 2009 Amoko had won her first tournament in Uganda and the next year joined the national team. It was when the then national champion labelled her “weak” that Amoko “felt something awaken inside of me”. She began to train even more.
In 2010, she went to her first Olympiad in Siberia.
She says every time her uncle talks to her today, he’s “very proud of me”.
“He’s very surprised at how fast I moved considering I did not have interest,” says Amoko.
“I had progressed faster than, I think. anybody ever.”
Luggya says Amoko’s high rating can be partly contributed to the fact that at one stage the federation compelled ladies to compete with men in national and regional events.
“This improved her game a great deal as she had to contend with stronger male opposition and beat some highly rated male players,” says Luggya.
“Along the way, as she also lost some games, that proved valuable to her in terms of learning.”
Amoko met Mutesi, a desperate child foraging for food until she happend upon free chess lessons, and a free cup of porridge, when she was “still a very little girl”, in 2008. Today Mutesi is now about 20 and a Woman
Candidate Master, the bottom-ranking title given by FIDE.
Amoko says she is “like my little sister.
“She’s always smiling,” says Amoko.
“I’ve seen her a bit disappointed after a game, but I’ve never seen her sad or feel sorry for herself.”
Amoko says Mutesi, who lost her father when she was three to HIV/AIDS, had offered to many “a very humbling lesson” and “inspired me a lot”.
There are currently 65 FIDE rated players, and 17 with titles in Uganda, the highest being International Master, says Luggya. The highest rated players in east Africa are both Ugandans — International Master Arthur Ssegwanyi (for the men), who has a rating of 2365, and among the ladies Amoko, who is ranked at 1822.
But Luggy says there are more than 1,000 players in the country who have participated in a tournament in the last five years.
“The number of people playing chess in Uganda especially children has increased of late,” says Luggya.
He adds, “you certainly cannot rule out the Phiona factor” in the game’s popularity in the country today, among other things.
“There are (so many) requests from parents asking for places near them where their children can be taught,” he says.
“The federation is actually overwhelmed by the number of children willing to learn because of inadequate resources— playing boards and demonstration boards (and) competent trainers who have the time to (teach) on a regular basis.”
Amoko, who since about 2014 has been teaching children chess in workshops, says everyone across Uganda— from grandparents to middle-aged men — now wanted to learn the game.
Despite a rise in the number of girls playing chess in Uganda, something that Mutesi is also credited for, Amoko says she would be happier if there were more.
“Most girls are really timid, when they lose they would rather give up,” she admits.
“Another of the biggest challenges we’ve had is whenever the girls get married chess takes a backseat.”
Amoko says when they have babies “most usually quit”.
“You find that all the veterans in chess are just the guys, people who represented us in the 70s,” she says.
Amoko, who is currently based in neighbouring Kenya for her postgraduate law studies and hopes to focus on refugee rights in the future, says funding is an obstacle for Uganda’s chess players. But she hopes the hype in Uganda surrounding Queen of Katwe, filmed in Uganda and South Africa, may change this.
“Friends of mine who do not even know what chess is are so excited (about the movie),” says Amoko.
“Chess players are very optimistic that it’s going to be an eye opener because we barely get any funding from the government”
Credit | Amy Fallon. Follow story here.
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