Wednesday, September 30, 2009

4th PGMA Cup: with 1 round to play, three foreign players shares top spot

I'm off to Duty Free Mall today for the final round and closing ceremony. Huge body of water still isolates us from the capital city but we have to brave it and get first hand information about the tournament. Perhaps we will force grab some score sheets piling up on the tables and finally have our much crave "PGN" in our hands.

In the meantime, after 8 rounds, we have three co-leaders. Anton Filipov of Ukraine, Ngoc Truong Son Nguyen of Vietnam and Merab Gagunashvili of Georgia- one of these foreign players could be crowned the next 4th President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo chess cup champion. Again, erstwhile leader for the past three rounds, GM Truong Son was caught off guard by settling with two straight quiet draws as his closest rivals are making their moves in the latter rounds. We won't see any Filipinos defending the title this year as the huge pack of Filipinos with 5.0 points like Laylo, Antonio, Buenaventura, Dableo, Bitoon, Dimakiling, Gonzales, and Senador can only hope for tie for second or third place.

The final round will start at 11:00 am at Duty Free Mall in Paranaque and the closing ceremony will follow soon after the final round.

Round 8 results
Rankings after round 8
Round 9 board pairings

1 comment:

rjsolcruz said...

des,

i admire your chess heroism, braving the floods just to be there and bring us on-site news. just be careful.

if i may suggest, i would like to read from you the behind the scene happenings in these tournaments. yung kasing facts of the case ay ang report sa news. what i am interested in is the details and your personal impression. things such as how tall is that gm, this gm or player looks like stallone, this gm loves to wear this or that. these are details that will identify us with our chess idols.