Sunday, January 14, 2007

Zone 3.3 Chess Championships

Held in the Kien Giang province in Vietnam, the Zone 3.3 Championships began last week and will end on 19 January. Six nations are represented: hosts Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Mongolia and Myanmar.

Having fallen to a FIDE rating of 2573, Mark Paragua is still the top Pinoy player at this event. He began well enough by beating a familiar name to Aussie readers - FM Dinh Duc Trong. However, in the second round, the current RP number one ran into IM Wesley So. The 13-year old posted a win against his much more experienced GM countryman.

News of being under investigation by the national federation back home for game fixing must be troubling the mind of Mark Paragua. In round 4 he dropped another point, this time to Oliver Barbosa! And then again lost to the 2256-rated Bayarsaihan Gundavaa the following round. After five games, then, Mark has the disastrous score of just 2 points.

Tables, games and photos are available at this excellent site.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the updates TCG.

Sad affairs of Philippine chess.

Hopefully things can be resolved, but the damage has been done?