Daniel Quizon recovered from an inferior position to trounce 14-year-old Thai Prin Laohawirapap and tie five others for the lead in the second round of the Asian Zonal 3.3 Chess Championships Sunday, May 2.
Prin, who stunned top seed Susanto Megaranto of Indonesia in the first round Saturday, won a pawn and had Quizon on the defensive. But the 16-year-old Quizon, toughened by many games where he was on the ropes, dug in while Prin consumed lots of time to crack the Filipino teener’s defenses.
Quizon offered a draw at the 15th move but Prin refused. Such was the intensity of their clash that Quizon and Prin had 30 minutes left before they reached 20 moves. The Thai cracked on the 29th move and Quizon forced the exchange of queens and entered an endgame where his two bishops were vastly superior to Prin, who quit after 44 moves of a Sicilian Defense.
Joining Quizon on top with 2.0 points were his Dasmariñas teammate Michael Concio, Michael Gotel of San Juan, and Indonesians Pitra Andyka, Yoseph Taher, and Mohammad Ervan.
Former Asian Youth champion John Marvin Miciano forced stalemate against second seed Novendra Priasmoro of Indonesia in a 62-move Dutch Defense after holding a slightly worse bishop versus knight endgame.
Darwin Laylo, the last Filipino to win the Asian Zonal, along with Miciano, Priasmoro, and teenager Jeremy Marticio have 1.5 points with seven others.
The top two placers in this tournament will qualify for the World Cup this August in Baku. This is the first tournament where the standard time control of 90 minutes is played after one year of faster time controls due to the COVID-19 pandemic. – Rappler.com
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