NOTABLE GAMES: Mark Paragua

Mark Callano Paragua (born March 29, 1984) is a Filipino chess Grandmaster. He was born in the Philippines to Flordeliza Callano and Ricardo Paragua, who is also his coach. The father and son travel around the world to participate in international tournaments.
At the 1998 Disney World Rapid Chess Championship for Kids, held November 15–17 at the EuroDisney theme park in Paris, Paragua and Bu Xiangzhi each finished first with 7½ points in Boys 14 and under section, with Paragua taking the gold medal on tiebreak points.
He was the youngest Filipino master ever, at 9 years of age. He also became the youngest Filipino GM ever at 20 (until GM Wesley So erased it), beating out Eugenio Torre's record by about two years.
He qualified for the 2004 World Championship in Tripoli, Libya. Paragua was eliminated by Super GM Viktor Bologan of Moldova in the first round 1-3. He also qualified for World Cup Chess 2005 (qualifying tournament for world championship). He upset Super GM Sergei Movsesian; formerly of Armenia now playing for Slovakia in the first round before narrowly losing in the tie breaker against an even stronger opponent in Alexey Dreev of Russia in the second round (Paragua drew both his games against Dreev in the regulation)
Paragua become the first super Grandmaster (to reach 2600 mark) in Philippine history after he placed second in the Asian Zonal 3.3 Chess Championships that ended Friday at the Stanford Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Paragua finished the 9-round Swiss system event with 7.0 points after being forced to a draw by Singapore’s GM Wu Shaobin (Elo 2510), who handled the black pieces. The Filipino earned enough Elo points from the tournament to take his 2596 Elo rating to over the 2600 norm for super GMs, according to International Arbiter Gene Poliarco. Although there is some dispute as to the definition of super GM;(for example: Eugenio Torre was considered as among the elite grandmasters back in the early and mid 80s yet his rating never breached the 2600 mark). In January 2006 FIDE listed Paragua with a rating of 2618 enough to get him in the top 100, but his rating has dropped to 2521 since his marriage.

NOTABLE GAMES: Rosendo Carreon Balinas, Jr.

ROSENDO CARREON BALINAS, JR.
(born Sep-10-1941, died Sep-24-1998) Philippines

Rosendo Carreon Balinas, Jr. was born on the 10th of September 1941 in Manila, The Philippines. He learnt to play at age 7 but did not take up the game seriously until he was 15. Balinas earned the IM title in 1975 and he became a GM in 1976.
He won the Philippine Open Championship 6 times and played for the Philippines Olympiad team from 1964-76.

He was 1st= with Svetozar Gligoric at the Manila Open in 1968, 3rd= in the zonal tournament in Melbourne 1975, 4th= at Dortmund 1976 and 1st at Odessa 1976. This last tourney, 1976 Moscow Central Chess Club International Tournament, Odessa, USSR marked the first time since Capablanca in 1936 that a foreign master won an international tournament in the USSR. For his feat, IM Balinas was awarded the Grandmaster title. It was the Russian Chess Federation and several of their strongest GMs who recommended that his Grandmaster title be awarded. He was a lawyer by profession and passed away in Antipolo City in 1998.

NOTABLE GAMES: Rogelio Antonio Jr

Rogelio Antonio Jr. (born February 19, 1962) is a Filipino chess player. Affectionately known as "Joey" Antonio or GM Joey, he was conferred the grandmaster (GM) title in 1993. As of July 2009, his ELO rating was 2557, making him the 3rd highest ranked player in the Philippines and number 357 in the world. Antonio is a member of the Philippine chess team for the November 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, China. He participated in the men's individual and the men's team events.

Olympiad Team Veteran

As an experienced professional, he has played many times for the Philippines Olympiad team, mostly on board 2, behind Asia's first ever grandmaster Eugenio Torre, for many years the Philippines number one player. Antonio's tally in this arena has never fallen below 50% and in 2000, at Istanbul, he scored 7/10 with a performance rating of 2682. His favorite openings are the Sicilian Defense and Caro-Kann Defense.

Fearless Play

Antonio has a reputation for being fearless in his style of play as well as one of the best-dressed grandmasters on the tournament circuit. His most contemporary results include 3rd at the Manapla, Negros Occidental event in 2001, 2nd= at the Leuven Open 2003 and 2nd at the Malaysian Open of 2005. Also in 2005, he took a bronze medal at the blitz event of the South East Asian (SEA) Games and a (board one) gold medal at the National Open Team Championship for club side Tagaytay City, with a fine score of 6/7. Less memorable was the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo Cup in 2006, when he had to retire through illness and the Phu Quoc (Vietnam) Zonal in 2007, where he finished a disappointing 12th, only the top 2 qualifying for the latest FIDE World Chess Championship cycle.
Journalist and chess expert Bobby Ang has many praiseworthy comments about Antonio's play, but equally, he fears that his weaknesses have not yet been addressed and this may be holding back his further progress. As a creative, attacking player, few would doubt his abilities, which are evidenced by the games below.











http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Rogelio_Antonio,_Jr.

NOTABLE GAMES: Eugene Torre

Eugenio Torre (born November 4, 1951) is a chess Grandmaster (GM). He is considered the strongest chess player the Philippines has ever produced during the 1980s and 1990s period, following the heels of Fischer-era Filipino chess champions National Master (NM) Ramon Lontoc, International Master (IM) Renato Naranja, IM Rodolfo Tan Cardoso and GM Rosendo Balinas, Jr. Super GM Wesley So is currently the top Philippine chess player.
1976-1983
GM Torre shot to prominence in 1976 as a possible future title challenger after winning a strong four-man tournament in Manila ahead of world champion Anatoly Karpov – thus becoming the first player to finish ahead of Karpov in a tournament since the latter became world champion. The high-point of his career came in the early 1980s when he was ranked world No.17; successfully going on to qualify to be a candidate for the world championship after tying for first with Lajos Portisch during the 1982 Toluca Interzonal.
Torre has the distinction of being the first Asian player to earn the title of International Grandmaster. He qualified for the Candidates Matches for the 1984 World Championship. In that preliminary stage, the contenders play matches against each other to determine who will challenge the world champion. Torre was eliminated when he lost his match against Zoltán Ribli by a score of 6-4.
After losing his quarter-final candidates match to Zoltan Ribli in 1983, Torre became disillusioned with chess and more or less went into semi-retirement. He went on to become a minor celebrity due to his daily one hour TV programme “Chess Today”
From 1970 to 2006, the former business administration undergraduate from Mapúa Institute of Technology donned the national colors 19 consecutive times in the World Chess Olympiad, breaking the old record of 18 consecutive held by Heikki Westerinen although still a shy of the record 20 non-consecutive appearances made by Hungary's Lajos Portisch. He had manned the top board for Team Philippines for a record 17 times already except in the 1970 and 2006 editions. He also has taken part in six Asian Chess Team Championships (1977, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1986, 1993) and once in the World Student Chess Team Championships (1969). During that 36-year stretch, Torre played on Board 1 a total of 17 times, a world record. He played a lower boar only twice: in 1970 in Siegen, Germany and in 2006 in Turin, Italy.

In 1988, Torre captained the Philippine team to its best-ever seventh-place finish in the Chess Olympiad in Thessaloniki, Greece.
In 2010, He made his 20th Olympiad Appearance equaling the same appearance with Lajos Portisch. In the 16th Asian Games, Torre helped the Philippines finished with the second place behind China, beating the Indian Team. n 2006, Torre participated in the second San Marino International Chess Open where he tied for fourth through eleventh places with 6½ points in nine rounds where he eventually placed seventh after the tie-breaks becoming the highest-placed Filipino in the said tournament. He had a performance rating of 2612 at the said tournament and won €1,000 for his seventh-place finish.

Torre was a friend of Bobby Fischer. He worked on Fischer's team in his 1992 rematch with Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia. Much later, Torre conducted interviews on Filipino radio with Bobby Fischer. Those interviews gained notoriety for Fischer and despair for his fans. Torre was involved in 1996 when Fischer Random Chess was launched. One anecdote during this period has it that when Torre and Fischer boarded a taxi in Buenos Aires, the driver immediately recognized Torre as a chess player. As both were about to leave the taxi, the driver, not knowing who the other distinguished passenger was, asked Torre: “Whatever happened to that crazy guy Fischer?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenio_Torre