Pestaño: The kulelats of chess
PREVIOUSLY, I penned an article about the little giants of chess-Armenia and Iceland. In Armenia, they have 33 grandmasters, 22 international masters and 29 Fide masters in a population of three million.
Iceland has 13 grandmasters, 13 international masters, and 25 FIDE masters in a...
Pestaño: World championships starts today
THE World Chess Championship 2012 will be a match between the current World Champion Viswanathan Anand of India and Boris Gelfand of Israel, winner of the Candidates tournament. The match will be held in Moscow starting today until May 30 under the auspices of Fide, the World Chess Federation....
Pestaño: Vietnamese wins Cebu leg of Poker Tour
THE 2012 Asia Pacific Poker Tour Cebu Main Event has just concluded, with Hoang Anh Do crowned as the champion. He pocketed P 5,927,000 and all the bragging rights that go with it.
Two-hundred and 45 players from 45 countries participated in this big event that had all kinds of poker...
Pestaño: Events to watch this year
THE World Chess Championship 2012 will be a match between the current world champion Viswanathan Anand of India and Boris Gelfand of Israel. It will take place on May 10 to 31 in the Engineering Building of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Russia.
Pestaño: Cepca to promote chess among prisoners
THE Cebu Executives and Professionals Chess Association, as part of its goals to promote the game, will reach out to our brothers in prison so they can “learn from a game that rewards patience and problem-solving and apply it to their own lives.”
We will start in Mandaue City Jail as the...
Pestaño: Asia Pacific Poker Tour hits Cebu
POKER! Do you know that there are an estimated 300 million poker players worldwide and that number keeps growing every year? Chances are, within a five or 10-mile radius of where you are right now, there are probably hundreds of poker games happening in people’s homes, and card clubs. Not to...
Pestaño: Chess thumbs down on cleavage, skirts
WOMEN who wear low-cut blouses to compete in chess tournaments are being put in check.
New rules dictated that women cannot reveal “decolletes” (the French word for cleavage) during the just concluded European Women`s Championship in Turkey.
The European Chess Union (ECU) has...
Pestaño: Side income of chess players (part 2)
UNLIKE professional boxers, tennis, basketball or football players, chess players need a side income to live a decent and comfortable life. Only about 20 to 30 percent of grandmasters live solely on income from tournaments.
Diplomats include Jose Capablanca (Cuba), Max Judd (consul-...
Pestaño: Side income of chess players (part 1)
A FEW issues ago, I wrote about how much a chess professional makes, which is not much unless you are a grandmaster.
Even then, only the top 20 to 30 percent have a decent and comfortable life, while the rest must rely on outside income. In fact, most players have a steady and permanent...
Pestaño: Little chess giants
TINY Armenia is a giant in the world of chess. The game is a national obsession in this nation of three million and can you believe this? They have 33 grandmasters, 22 International masters and 29 Fide masters!
The passion started with Tigran Petrosian, who won the world championship in...
Pestaño: What US presidents have in common
CHESS in the White House has not gotten as much press as it should although almost all the occupants play the game. This is the second and final part .
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th U.S. President, played chess during his hunting trips. He was rumored to have kept an astrological...
Pestaño: What US presidents have in common (Part 1)
ASIDE from being born leaders and a strong will to excel most American presidents play chess in their spare time.
Whatever role chess may have played in their political ascendancy no one will ever really know, but from the first, George Washington, to the 44th, Barack Obama, there are...
Pestaño: A timeless story of love and chess
LAST month we were treated to a spectacle of the city attempting to land in the Guinness book of world records with the world`s biggest chess tournament at the Cebu City Sports Center.
An interesting part of the event was the introduction where a chess game was played by people in full...
Pestaño: Judit Polgar loses...to a woman
JUDIT Polgár (born July 23, 1976) is by far the strongest female chess player in history. In 1991, Polgár achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years and four months, the youngest person ever to do so at that time.
Judit has never played in women’s tournaments and has never...
Pestaño: What do Nobel prize winners have in common?
ASIDE from being highly intelligent and predominantly male (97.5 percent), you would be surprised to know that a great number of Nobel laureates play chess as their main hobby.
Pestaño: Pason snares title in world’s biggest tournament
COMPRISING a record 43,157 participants in a tournament which started last October, Allan Pason, 15, a second-year student of Pajo National High School, won the world’s biggest tournament that is now a Guinness record.
The 95 participating schools, all in Cebu City, included the...
Pestaño: How much does a chess pro make?
UNLESS you are a grandmaster (GM) or in a few cases, an International Master (IM), it’s damn next to nothing. It’s not enough to live a decent life or support a family.
In fact, most GMs have a steady job or sideline aside from chess. The World Champion and the other “super GMs” make a...
Pestaño: CCSC’s remarkable feat in world chess
I NEVER in my wildest imagination expected this kind of achievement. Fifty thousand chess players and counting have participated in what is expected to be a Guinness record that will last far beyond our lifetime.
Guinness World Records is a reference book published annually, containing a...
Pestaño: Sinulog games
ASIDE from the street dancing and its culmination at the Cebu City Sports Center, the highlights of the Sinulog celebration are the various sports played including the popular marathon and football.
In this case, what is of interest to us are chess and poker.
Twenty-seven teams...
Pestaño: Cebu chess hits big strides in 2011
THIS year was a great one for local chess. The last major tournament was the Cebu City Chess Classic organized by the Cebu Chess Association and sponsored by the Cebu City government. It was held at the Activity Center of Elizabeth Mall last Dec. 20 to 23 and was the fourth Fide-rated...
Pestaño: Guidelines for Sinulog chess tournament
THE Cebu Executives and Professionals Chess Association Inc. (Cepca), with the support of the Cebu City government, is pleased to invite all chess teams to the 2012 Sinulog Open chess team tournament on Jan. 7-8 at SM City.
This team tournament is open to all schools, clubs, companies,...
Pestaño: Will chess become an Olympic sport?
MILLIONS of chess players worldwide are hoping it will be but I seriously doubt it will happen.
Chess has been played for 1,500 years and it is the most popular game in this planet with over 700 million who know the basic moves.
Pestaño: ‘Dumb experts’ and common chess fallacies
ONE advantage of being a chess player is that people assume that you are smarter than the average e guy and that you must be intelligent.
I have been around chess for more than half a century and I know that this is not true.
Pestaño: Tal Memorial and Yifan retains crown
THE 6th Mikhail Tal Memorial has just concluded in Moscow, Russia. Ten of the world’s top players participated in a round-robin tournament. The average Elo was 2776, making this a category 22 tournament and the strongest in chess history.
Pestaño: Solitary gold in the SEA Games
BACK in the 60s and up to the 80s, the Philippineswas considered a Class A chess-playing country. In fact, the western press dubbed us as the “Russians of Asia.” China and India were way behind us and Vietnam was unheard of, being in a state of war in the 60s and early 70s.
Now, the men’s...
