Kenny Solomon

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Kenny Solomon (Kenneth Terence Solomon) is a South African chess grandmaster, born on 8 October 1979 in Mitchells Plain, Cape Town. He is the first and, so far, the only grandmaster South Africa has produced.

Career highlights:
- He started playing chess at 13, inspired by his older brother who qualified for the 1992 Chess Olympiad in Manila. He quickly improved and became the South African Under-16 champion within two years.
- He won the South African Championship in 2003 and the South African Open in 1999, 2005, and 2007. He was the top-ranked South African player in 2003.
- He became an International Master in 2004 and earned his final GM norm at the 40th Chess Olympiad in Istanbul.
- In December 2014, he won the African Chess Championship. Under a special FIDE rule, this earned him the Grandmaster title, making him South Africa’s first grandmaster and the first grandmaster of Coloured ethnicity from the country.
- He qualified for the 2017 Chess World Cup, where he was defeated in the first round by Fabiano Caruana.
- Acting: he appeared in the 2015 short film A Great Day.