Thirteen year old Filippinos can also play chess

The Greek Stelios Halkias and the American Alex Shabalov ended shared first at last week's strong open tournament in Bad Wiessee. All right, that's clear, so what's next. Well, not so quick please. There actually happened a bit more there in Germany. Not one but two thirteen year old Filippine boysTwo Filippines, of whom one is only thirteen years old, earned a... grandmaster norm! We're talking about Wesley So and Darwin Laylo. (Who? Well, look them up with my new feature: the empty box in the grey side column for finding FIDE-ratings!)

The two lads are both IM already; Wesley So has 2411 behind his name and Darwin Laylo 2448. This means that Moulthun Ly is not the only talented young player with Asian parents. Wesley So just turned an IM (in October!), if I understand the brand new Filippine website correctly.

It seems So and Laylo began a European tour, because they also participated in the Calvia open (Mallorca) in the last week of October. That trip was sponsored by the chairman of the National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP), Prospero Pichay Jr. Until a while ago the Asian country didn't mean a lot in the chess world, besides the fact that former FIDE-president Campomanes is from the Filippines and that Karpov-Kortchnoi '78 was held in Baguio City. It seems that the ambitious Pichay Jr. is doing all he can to stimulate Filippine chess; recently he opened the 'Chess Institutes Building' in the building of the Bulacan State University in Malolos.

This is all I could find about the two young but strong IM's. But the Closet Grandmaster writes a lot about them (because he writes a lot about Asian and Australian chess).

But it's quite clear that the boys can play chess. Take this game, that can function as a good tactical exercise in a training because of the long, forced line.

So-GM Prusikin Bad Wiessee, 2006

Black just took on d4 and is now beaten severely: 19.Nxe6! Qxe6 (19... dxe3 20. Nxf8 Kxf8 21. Qxd5 also wins for White) 20. Nxd5 Qf7 (20... Qxd5 21. Qxg6+ Kh8 22. Re7) 21. Re7 Qf5 22. Qxd4 Nf6 23. Re5 Qd7 24. Qd3 Nxd5 25. Qxg6+ Qg7 26. Qe6+ Qf7 27. Qh6 (the last pointe) 27... Qf6 28. Rg5+ Kf7 29. Qh7+ Ke8 30. Rxd5 and Black resigned.

In the game selection one more victory by So (with Black against GM Burmakin) and also a game by Laylo in which he outplays GM Andrei Sokolov with Black. Finally a nice game by Dutchman Robert Ris, who played an excellent tournament with 6,5 out of 9. In the big Swiss group Karel van der Weide and Gerard Welling ended quite anonimously at spots 45 and 46.

Via this link you can replay all Bad Wiessee 2006 games: http://www.oibm-bad-wiessee.de/MyChessViewer22/2006.htm. And if you change the 'htm' at the end into 'pgn' you can download them! :-)