Cebuano wins silver in US National Open

By Frank “Boy” Pestaño
Chessmoso

ENRICO “Econg” Sevillano showed he still has what it takes by finishing tied for second in the 2007 US National Open held in Las Vegas last June 7 to 11.

Over 700 players played in the Open section that was won by Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura with 5.5/6 on five wins and a solitary draw against Econg.

Pinoy Votes: Sun.Star Election 2007 Coverage

Nakamura, who has a USCF rating of 2738, won $6,000 and the Edmonton Cup. Tied for second to seventh places with five points each were Econg (2571), GM Victor Korchnoi (2664), GM Gregory Serper (2562), IM Joshua Friedel (2542), IM Renier Gonzalez (2526) and GM Andranik Matikozyan (2524). Each won $1,035.

Econg won against Tom Browncombe in the first round; over David Filifovich in the second; demolished IM David Vigorito in the third; drew with Nakamura in the fourth; upset GM Sergey Erenburg in the fifth and cruised to a draw against GM Varuzhan Akobian (2651) in the last round.

Enrico is the son of my friend Luis Sevillano and has a younger brother, Voltaire, who is also a strong chess player. A promising kiddie player is Kyle Sevillano, Econg’s nephew.

Kyle is only eight years old and is a constant winner in our club’s (Cepca) monthly Kiddies tournament.

OSCAR. The Fide Commission for Chess Information, Publication and Statistics (CHIPS) thru the “64” Russian Magazine has invited all chess columnists in the world to vote for the 2006 Chess Oscar winner.

The top 10 players I have chosen are 1.) Vladimir Kramnik 2.) Viswanathan Anand 3.) Levon Aronian 4.) Magnus Carlsen 5.) Gata Kamsky 6.) Wang Hao 7.) Veselin Topalov 8.) Peter Leko 9.) Judit Polgar 10.) Vassily Ivanchuk.

I choose Kramnik for his being the undisputed champion; Anand for winning the 2006 Corus tournament; Aronian for snaring the 2006 Linares; and Carlsen, who is only 16 and I believe will be a future world champion. Wang, 17, will also be a serious contender in the years to come.

First choice will get 13 points, second, 11 points, third, nine points, fourth, seventh points, fifth, six points up to the 10th placer, who will get one point.

CANDIDATES SECOND ROUND. One of the side events taking place at the on-going candidates matches in Elista, Kalmykia, Russia is the computer challenge pairing Deep Junior, the current computer champion versus Deep Fritz. The Israeli program Deep Junior is running on 16 processors and looks at 25 million positions per second, while Deep Fritz has eight processors at 2.66 MHz and 12 million positions.

Deep Junior was clearly superior with a 4-2 score on two wins and four draws in six games. Its share of the match was $60,000.

In the second round of the candidates elimination matches, Levon Aronian (2759, Armenia) won the first game against Alexei Shirov (2699, Spain) and drew the next five games, 3.5-2.5..

In the second match, Boris Gelfand (2733, Israel) needed only five games to ward off Gata Kamsky (2705, USA),3.5-1.5.

Likewise, Peter Leko (2738, Hungary) did the same to Evgeny Bareev (2635 Russia), 3.5-1.5.

Alexander Grischuk (2717, Russia ) and Sergei Rublevsky (2680, Russia) are deadlocked at 3.0-3.0 and will play tiebreak games.

The four winners will proceed to Mexico City this coming September to join Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, Peter Svidler and Alexander Morozevich in vying for the World Championship.

CEPCA NEWS. Mandy Baria has chosen June 17 for the monthly tournament of the club. Stella Maris is the venue and the games will start at 1 p.m. The Kiddies and the Juniors will also be played together with the regular members.

We would like to extend the club’s condolence to Nicnic Climaco as his younger brother, Allan, recently passed away. To mention, my co- founders of Cepca are Art Ynclino, Gerry Tomakin, Loy Minoza, Alex Tolentino, Danny Pestaño, Nicnic and the late Sonny Sollano.