Olympiad exploits may hike So, Barbosa ratings

MANILA, Philippines - Despite its 1-3 setback to Romania in the final round and a 21st finish overall in the World Chess Olympiad, Team Philippines surpassed expectations in Istanbul, Turkey.

Top board player GM Wesley So went undefeated, holding his ground against the world’s leading super GMs and finishing with 6.5 points on two wins and nine draws.

His impressive performance is expected to hike his current FIDE rating of 2652 to 2660 after gaining 10.3 points.

So slugged it out with the best of the best, drawing with Moldova’s GM Viktor Bologan (2660), Armenia’s GM Levon Aronian (2816), Bulgaria’s GM Veselin Topalov (2752), Hungary’s GM Peter Leko (2737), England’s GM Michael Adams (2710), China’s GM Wang Hao (2726), Vietnam’s GM Le Quang Liem (2693) and Romania’s Constantin Lupulescu (2614).

GM Oliver Barbosa also put in a creditable performance and emerged the team’s highest scorer with seven points. He saw action in 11 rounds, coming up with five wins and four standoffs against two defeats. He wound up with an impressive performance rating of 2668, the 64th best in the meet that drew more than 800 players.

The feat gave Barbosa 20.4 rating points, moving him closer to a dream 2600-rating level at 2574.

Barbosa fought seven players with a minimum rating of 2618, beating two in Bulgaria’s GM Kiril Georgiev (2682) and England’s GM Gawain Jones (2653) while drawing with Armenia’s GM Sergei Movsesian (2698), Vietnam’s GM Nguyen Nguoc Trung Son (2639) and Romania’s GM Mircea-Emilian Parligras (2618).

He lost to Hungary’s GM Zoltan Almasi (2713) and China’s GM Ding Liren (2695).

GM Eugene Torre, meanwhile, proved he can still be a force to reckon with as the 60-year-old veteran of 21 Olympiads posted two victories and three draws against two losses.

He eked out big wins over Hungary’s GM Ferenc Berkes (2685) and old rival GM Nigel Short (2698) of England that netted him 12.8 rating points that is expected to boost his current rating of 2469.

GM Mark Paragua, for his part, finished with six points on three wins, six draws against two setbacks and is tipped to improve his current 2508 after gaining 7.9 rating points.

International Master Oliver Dimakiling, the team’s alternate, had three points on three wins and a loss and gained 10.5 rating points.

The Phl sparked hopes of a record finish when it zoomed to joint second after eight rounds following victories over Bulgaria and England and a draw with No. 4 Hungary.

But So and company wavered against the Chinese in the ninth round, struggled to even things up with the Vietnamese in the penultimate round before closing out with a sorry 1-3 defeat to the Romanians.

With 14 match points, the Filipinos finished tied for 19th with 14 others before ending up 21st overall after the tiebreak.

Armenia, which barely beat the Phl, 2.5-1.5, in the fourth round, and top seed Russia wound up tied for first with 19 points but the former took the crown with a superior tiebreak score.

The Armenians downed the Hungarians, 2.5-1.5, while the Russians dumped the Germans, 2.5-1.5, in the final round late Sunday.

China, which shared the lead going into the last round, was ambushed by second seed Ukraine, 1-3, and fell to fourth.

Vietnam emerged the second best performer from Asia as it ended up at seventh, tying the Phl’s and Southeast Asia’s best finish in the Olympiad.

The Phl women’s team finished at 43rd with 11 points after drawing with Bosnia and Herzegovina.