RP chessers score nice, easy victories

Pitted against lowly-rated opponents, Mark Paragua, Joseph Sanchez and Ronald Dableo won their respective first round assignments with relative ease Monday in the X Nice International Open chess tournament at the Grand Aston Hotel in Nice, France.

Paragua, fresh from his victory in the Cannes International Open Sunday, downed Mathieu Tournier (2180) with the white pieces while Sanchez, who placed second to Paragua, and Dableo pulled through with the black against Christian Valette (2140) and Eric-Andre Birens (2112), respectively.

The field is lacking in depth with only one player on the super-GM level (Igor Miladinovic-2609) and four with 2500 rating, including Vladimir Georgiev (2566), Nikola Mitkov (2552), Petar Genov of Bulgaria (2501) and Paragua (2500). Majority of the 164-player field tote only 2100 rating, some even below 2000.

Unlike in the Cannes tilt, however, Paragua and Dableo found themselves paired in the second round of this week’s championship with the former out to duplicate his final round victory over the latter last week that netted him the crown.

Like the last time out, Dableo (2305) will handle the white pieces and is expected to come up with a surprise opening against Paragua, who beat him in 55 moves of an English Opening.

Sanchez (2410) is fancied to notch his second victory against Flavio Perez of France, who totes a 2222 rati