Tournament highlights

By Frank “Boy” Pestaño
Cheesemoso

THE Cebu Executives and Professionals Chess Association (Cepca) monthly tournament for Kiddies, Juniors and regular members for May was held last weekend at Deep Blue Café SM City and the winners are, for Kiddies: First placer Cleomar Tilus, 5 points, second placer Raymond Abellana 4 third to fifth placers were Cheryl Angot, Raffy Bensi, Jevin Albios, 3.5.

In the Juniors Category the final standing is first placer Nikki Sabiquil; two were tied for second Felix Shawn Balbona and his sister Jessa with 4 points and had tallied three points—-Kevin Albios, Godfrey Villamor, Herbert Siiton, Gerald Miral and Daniel Minoza.

The come-backing Bong San Pascual easily won the regular handicapping tournament with five straight wins followed by Nic Cuizon with 4. Miguel Banebane, Joe Atillo and Felix Poloyapoy Jr. managed to score 3 points each.

Meanwhile nine barangay teams played a round robin at the City Sports Center last weekend also and here are the final standings: First Camputhaw A with 28 points, second place Sawang Calero A with 27, third placer Tinago with 23.5 points and fourth placer Camputhaw B with 19.5.

The players for Kamputhaw A were Ed Vincent Lepalm, Patrick Osorno, Jaymond Albino and Leonard Obatay. For Sawang Calero the members were Ricky Raganot, Camilo Benabente, Mark Kevin Albios and Johnny Cualbar.

On the national front, the talk of the town is Jayson Gonzales who finally became the country’s ninth grandmaster after breaching the 2500 barrier with his win at the Subic Open last month and leading the Philippine team to a rout over Myanmar in Tagaytay City.

“Nagpapasalamat ako kay Rep. (Butch) Pichay dahil hindi siya tumigil sa pagsuporta sa akin mapa local at internasyunal para matupad ang pangarap kong makuha ang GM title,” said Gonzales.

Gonzales, a member of the Philippine Army Chess Team joins the elite-GM group of Eugene Torre, Joey Antonio Jr., Bong Villamayor, Nelson Mariano, Mark Paragua, Darwin Laylo, Wesley So and the late Rosendo Balinas.

International. Peter Leko, Hungary’s top player played a one-on-one eight rapid games with current chess sensation, Magnus Carlsen of Norway. The event was played from May 28 to June 1st and Carlsen won, 5-3, with two wins and six draws.

Miskolc has a history of pairing their top player Leko with the leading players of the world, first with Michael Adams, Anatoly Karpov and Vladimir Kramnik last year,
The Bosnia Sarajevo tournament took place from May 23to June 2 and was a six-player double round-robin featuring Alexander Morozevich (2774), Perez Dominguez (2695), Sergei Movsesian (2695), Arty Timofeev (2664), B. Predojevic (2651) and Ivan Sokolov (2690).

At the end of seven rounds Morozevich scored 6 points with a performance rating of 2987 but had three draws in the end to win the tournament with 7.5/10,1.5 points
over the field. With this win, Morozevich moves up to No. 3 in the world behind Anand and Kramnik.

XXI Magistral Ciudad de León in Spain featured four players, who played two semifinal matches of four games each, with the winners meeting in the final.

Ukrainian GM Vassily Ivanchuk defeated world champion Viswanathan Anand in the final by 2½-1½ . It was the first time that Anand did not win the tournament after
seven tries.

The other players were Spain-based Alexei Shirov and Spain’s top player Francisco Vallejo Pons.

The King’s Tournament, composed mostly of contemporaries of Eugene Torre, took place in Bazna, Romania from May 24 to June 4. Nigel Short won the event with 7/10 without a loss and a 1.5 spread over second placers, Lajos Portisch and Ulf andersson.

It is his best performance in a long time. A surprise participant was Henrique Mecking, who was rated third in the world in the ’70s, with a respectable five points.