Blessings Motshabi

Botswana

I’m in my twenties and I started playing chess in the street at the age of 8 years but it took 7 years without playing the tournaments because of not having a guide or a coach in the beautiful game. I showed myself at the 2015 Botswana youth Chess championships and found out that I can try my best and ever since I had achieved 3 Gold medals, 3 Silver medals, and 1 Bronze medal without a coach and sometimes I felt like if I had my own coach I could have achieved a lot from my chess career until now. 

I met a new world during the pandemic of one of the Croatian Coach Goran Radic who was connecting the world through chess together with his son Len. Recently I became Arena FIDE Master (AFM) which is my official FIDE title. I’m also a certified Smiling Pawn coach.

I was one of Botswana’s young promising chess players who have passionately responded to Smiling Pawn’s drive to develop and nurture talent at the grassroots in a bid to make the world come together as one in the game of Chess (Gen una Sumus). I’m a happy Boy today. The support from Smiling Pawn has healed me a lot.