Saturday, January 13, 2007

NCFP Investigating Paragua

Ian Brion's follow-up report now claims that the National Chess Federation of the Philippines is still looking for evidence against grandmaster Mark Paragua in this latest scandal that has hit Philippine chess. Brion writes:

In the case of Paragua, Estimo said it was not clear yet if he intentionally handed Garma the victory in their final round encounter in the tournament.

“But we took note na going into the last round Garma was not yet assured of the championship, as [GM] Joey Antonio was just a half-point behind him,” he explained.

“But we are also looking at other tournaments he joined where he was included among the suspects,” Estimo added of Paragua, the country’s top-rated player.


On the other hand, the Sun Star Davao newspaper reported yesterday that Davao City's chess scene is also plagued with game fixing. The paper quotes an NCFP director as saying, "Yes, game-fixing is also happening in Davao specially if the cash prize is for the top three placers only".

Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine about this and his take was rather casual. It was just down to economics he said. When money is tight, in a country like RP, what can you expect to happen? People do everything they can to get ahead. Sadly, game fixing is wrong and should be stamped out!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe the lesson here is to have money placings that go down to 5th and 7th rather than just have all the cash for the top 3.

At the end of the day its quality chess people want to see,not some dodgy draw or convenient messy loss.

Anonymous said...

The lower boards wont be winning prize money Garvin...hehe.