Where is GM Bong Villamayor?

Wondering why GM Bong Villamayor suddenly disappeared from local chess scene? Here's why. GM Villamayor is currently based in Singapore (he was previously based there prior to his return to the country) where he joins another Filipino grandmaster, Nelson Mariano III as a trainer/coach of a chess school called ChessKidz. GM Nelson Mariano himself first founded the ChessKidz.

Just recently, GMs Villamayor and Mariano together with their students sally forth from their school to compete in their first ever overseas field trip in Malaysia for the Merdeka Open Team championship where they emerged as the over all champion. Here's the result and video from the ChessKidz school provided to us by GM Bong Villamayor himself.

ChessKidz official website

Final Results of our 1st Chesskidz Overseas Field Trip in the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Merdeka Open Team Championships 2010:

Chesskidz Men's Team - Over-All Champion

Bd.1 GM Nelson Mariano II

Bd.2 GM Bong Villamayor

Bd.3 Nelson Mariano III (overseas- Chesskidz Student)

Bd.4 Steve O'Reilly (Chesskidz Student)

Bd.5 Joel Hicap

Chesskidz Under 10 Team: 34th Place Overall /70 Teams Open Category

- Our Chesskidz Under-10 Team finished 34th place out of 70 teams (each team is composed of 5 players: 4 regular and one reserve) with a performance of 4.5/9 match games (4 wins, 1 draw, 4 losses).

They also placed tie for 2nd in U-12 category, tie-break 4th overall in U-12.

Shawn Foo snatched the Gold Medal in Board 5 scoring 4/4 - a 100% performance.

Chesskidz U-10 Team

Bd.1 Krystal Soh (Team Captain) (7 years old)

Bd.2 Tommy Tan (9 years old)

Bd.3 Matthew Lau (9 years old)

Bd.4 Sarah Koh-Caleb (9 years old)

Bd.5 Shawn Foo (Gold Medal) (9 years old)