Grandmaster Mark Paragua, as a follow up to his 2012 Philippines National Chess Championship trophy, won the 2013 Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) Cup International Chess Championship, a clear first place finish, held 14-20 January at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium, Rizal Memorial Sports Complex, Manila.

GM Paragua, seeded 6th in this tournament, in route to his indisputable win, scored 7.5/9 from his 7Wins-1Draw-1Loss record with a Rating Performance (Rp) of 2677 and a +17.2 FIDE rating points gain.

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Nbd7 8.Qf3 Qc7 9.O-O-O b5 10.Bd3 Bb7 11.Rhe1 Qb6 12.Nd5 exd5 13.Nc6 Bxc6 14.exd5+ Be7 15.dxc6 Nc5 16.Bxf6 gxf6 17.Bf5 Rd8 18.b4 Na4 19.Qe4 Qc7 20.Bd7+ Rxd7 21.cxd7+ Qxd7 22.Qa8+ Qd8 23.Rxe7+

1-0

a tactical loss or Mark the Spark

http://chess-results.com/partieSuch...

The 3rd HDBank Cup International Open Chess Tournament that was held on 19-24 March 2013 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam was won by the #1 seed Hyper GM Le Quang Liem (VIE)2709 when his final round (R9) game against the #2 seed Hyper GM Berkes Ferenc (HUN)2702 was drawn after the 31st move.

Le Quang Liem, who only needs a draw in the last round to claim the title, scored 7.5/9 (6Wins-3Draws-NoLoss) with a Rating-performance(Rp) of 2779 and a +7.8 in FIDE rating points. This bring his Standard ‘Live Rating’ to 2716.8 or 2717 FIDE rating come April 2013 publication. This will equal his Standard ‘Peak Rating’ of 2717 which he previously registered in September 2011. Le, took home the top prize of 10,000 USD and the Champion’s trophy.

The 17-year-old and #11 seed GM Lu Shanglei (CHN)2552, who was with the 7-man group of 6-pointers after the penultimate round(R8) was the sole winner in R9 among the seven and finished at 2nd place scoring 7.0/9 (5Wins-4Draws-NoLoss) and took home the 1st runner-up trophy plus the 5,000 USD. Lu, ousted GM Barbosa Oliver (PHI)2556 who was also gunning for 2nd place finish. Barbosa resigned after Lu’s 37th move and was relegated to 11th place overall scoring 6.0/9.

Finishing 3rd to 10th place is an 8-man group of 6.5/9 pointers. The #5 seed GM Zhou Jianchao (CHN)2595 with the highest Buchholz tiebreak points finished 3rd place overall plus the 2nd runner-up trophy.

Philippines Top Finishers

The top finisher for the Philippines was the #13 seed GM Paragua Mark (PHI)2539 who finished 4th place overall scoring 6.5/9 (5Wins-3Draws-1Loss). He absorbed his lone loss to the eventual tournament’s champion Le Quang Liem in R6. Paragua’s Rp was 2647 and had gained a +13.5 FIDE rating points.

The #16 seed GM Gomez John Paul (PHI)2510 who also scored 6.5/9(5Wins-3Draws-1Loss) came in at 10th place overall.

The rest of the Philippines participants and their respective ‘Rank’ & ‘Scores’:

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. g3 c6 4. Bg2 d5 5. e3 Bg7 6. Ne2 O-O 7. O-O b6 8. b3 Ba6 9. Nd2 Nbd7 10. Bb2 Rc8 11. Rc1 b5 12. c5 b4 13. a3 bxa3 14. Bxa3 e5 15. Bb2 exd4 16. Bxd4 Qe7 17. b4 Rb8 18. Ra1 Bxe2 19. Qxe2 Rxb4 20. Qa6 Nxc5 21. Qxc6 Ne6 22. Be5 Rd8 23. Nf3 Ne4 24. Bxg7 Kxg7 25. Qa6 Rb7 26. Qa5 Qc5 27. Qxc5 N6xc5 28. Nd4 Rd6 29. Ra5 Ra6 30. Rxa6 Nxa6 31. Ne2 Rb2 32. Nf4 Nb4 33. Nxd5 Nxd5 34. Bxe4 Nc3 35. Bd3 a5 36. Rc1 Rb3 37. Ra1 a4 38. Bc2 g5 39. h4 gxh4 ½-½

pgnplayer.com/

u can replay it here

http://www.chess-results.com/tnr101...

Ok din ang climb ng buddy GM Barbosa from below, eh got 2nd place pa...

Grandmaster Mark Paragua, the 2013 Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) Cup International Chess & 2012 Philippines National Chess titlist, pinned the 2nd of the five(5) qualification berth for the Chess World Cup (CWC) 2013 available in the just concluded Manny Pacquiao Cup – Asian Continental Chess (ACC) Championship 2013 in Pasay City, Metro Manila, Philippines conducted on 18-26 May 2013 with Midas Hotel as the venue.

For the simul, organizers already reduced the reg fee to 1K, but will have to see turnout.

In 1990, Paragua himself at six (6) years old played current World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand of India in a Simul. Exhibition held in Makati City. Again in 1993, during the World Youth Chess Championship in Bratislava, Slovakia, Mark take part in a 32 boards Chess Exhibition against 4 time Hungarian Champion GM Andraz Adorjan and made a fighting draw against him. The purpose of the Simul is to encourage players especially the youths to play chess and meet GM Paragua over 64 squares board.

August 08, 2013 06:25:05 PM
The top seed
By Bobby Ang

The 2013 World Cup will be starting this weekend and I would like to write something about the top seed, GM Levon Aronian. He would always be the sentimental favorite of Filipinos, for as most of our BW readers know he has a Filipina girlfriend, WIM Arianne Caoili (she played top board for the Philippine women’s team in the 2000 Istanbul Chess Olympiad). On the other hand, objectively, he really is the strongest player in the field.

By the way, before the leave the topic of Arianne Caoili, an interviewer recently asked her if she regularly plays chess with Aronian and how many times has she won. Her answer was “we have never played an entire chess game against each other. I am not so stupid to even try.” Good answer.

Back to Aronian. Eight years ago, in the 2005 Khanty-Mansiysk World Cup the eight survivors who were about to start on the quarterfinals and semi-finals matches were Boris Gelfand, Evgeny Bareev, Sergei Rublevsky, Mikhail Gurevich, Alexander Grischuk, Etienne Bacrot, Ruslan Ponomariov, and Levon Aronian. The first four were the veterans and the last four, all around 22 years of age at that time, the young upstarts

Mark Paragua also played in that world cup. He upset Sergei Movsesian in the 1st round and then fell to Alexey Dreev (a former candidate) after a very exciting battle in the second. I met GM Mark in a party hosted by Dodong Romero shortly before the quarterfinals and naturally asked for a prediction -- who does he think will win. The answer I expected was either Ponomariov or Gelfand, but surprisingly Mark chose Aronian. Why? “I had observed his play and how he thinks -- he is a genius”.

Despite my skepticism Mark’s prediction came true -- Aronian defeated Gurevich 1.5-0.5 in the quarters, Etienne Bacrot 1.5-0.5 in the semis, and then beat Ruslan Ponomariov 3.0-1.0 in the finals to win the World Cup. Under the previous rules he would have been declared FIDE World Champion outright, but 2005 was the year when FIDE experimented with a new format -- the World Cup winner will be one of the qualifiers for the Candidates matches which will in turn qualify the top finishers to the 2007 Mexico world Championship tournament (this was the one which Anand won).