Roland Salvador Wins Arco

While we've been covering the exploits of the Australians in The Netherlands (Essent) and the Filipinos in Spain (Calvia) as well as the juniors in Georgia, of course - there were actually another two of our beloved compatriots who were battling it out in another European country - Italy. Both FM Roland Salvador, from RP, and IM Alexander Wohl, from Australia, competed in the 28th Festival Scacchistico Internazionale Open held from 21 October to 29 October.

We're terribly sorry, indeed, that we are very tardy with this information. We just didn't know about it! Now, I must thank our good friend from the Philippines, Mr Michael Rabena, who pointed us to this very important news - especially, from the Pinoy point of view.

Roland Salvador came out on top of a field of 108 players in section A of this Italian tournament. The field included the likes of GM Milan Drasko, GM Dragisa Blagojevic and famous author IM Jacob Aagard. FM Salvador actually scored the same number of points as IM Aagard and Michael Shaeffer but was declared overall winner on tiebreak. IM Alex Wohl scored a total of 6 points. In the ninth and last round, Wohl and Salvador crossed swords. The Filipino won that game. We'd like nothing better than to present that encounter - however, it's not available on the official site.

Instead, we bring you this win by Salvador over IM Paolo Vezzosi. The Italian Vezzosi has had some prior match-ups with Pinoys this year. In the Lodi tournament last June, he lost to Yves Ranola and defeated Arianne Caoili.


Below are the round-by-round results of both Wohl and the eventual winner.

Roland Salvador (7 points out of 9)
1 bt di Lazzaro
2 bt la Manna
3 bt Schaeffer
4 1/2 Drasko
5 bt Vezzosi
6 1/2 Bronznik
7 1/2 Teske
8 1/2 Aagard
9 bt Wohl

Alexander Wohl (6 points out of 9)
1 bt Bondielli
2 bt Wagman
3 1/2 Happel
4 lost Vezzosi
5 bt Schrott
6 bt Diotallevi
7 1/2 Blagojevic
8 bt Isonzo
9 lost Salvador