OZAMIZ—Ruelle Canino and Mark Jay Bacojo overcame overwhelming odds and eked out podium finishes in the 6th ASEAN Individual Chess Championships-Gov. Henry Oaminal Cup at the Asenso Misamis Occidental Resort and Aquamarine Park here Saturday.
Seeded 13th out of 37 participants, Canino, 17, finished second in the women’s division while the 19-year-old Bacojo, seeded 24th of 4 entrants, ended up third in the premier open section in this event backed by the Philippine Sports Commission.
For their efforts, Canino earned an automatic Woman International Master title and a Woman Grandmaster norm while Bacojo an IM title.
It also gained Canino, the reigning national women’s champion who was rated 2110 before the event, a staggering 99.6 points and should breach the 2200-rating level for the first time in her young, promising career.
Interestingly, Canino and Bacojo, both students at Far Eastern University, thanked their school’s board chair Aurelio “Gigi” Montinola and athletic director Mark Molina, for supporting them.
“This is for our country and also to the people who supported us from the start,” said Canino.
Canino split the point with Mongolian WIM Batpelden Buyankhishig in 56 moves of a Queen’s Gambit and finished at No. 2 with 6.5 points, half a point behind eventual titlist, Russian IM Evgenija Ovod.
For Bacojo, he held Mongolian IM Munkhdalai Amilal to a 71-move draw of a Sicilian and wound up at No. 3 with six points behind eventual winner in Indian IM V S Raahul with seven points and runner-up in Vietnamese IM Nguyen Quoc Hy with 6.5 points.
Canino actually finished in a three-way tie for second with top seed Woman FIDE Master Anna Zhurova of Russia and WIM Laysa Latifah of Indonesia but won on tiebreaks.
Same with Bacojo, who ended up in a three-player logjam at No. 3 with Amilal and Indian IM Kamotra Soham but took the bronze.
