Quizon eyes rating points, Olympiad conditioning in Abu Dhabi chess tilt

MANILA, Philippines – Filipino International Master Daniel Quizon is eyeing to kill two birds with one stone when he joins the ultra-competitive 30th Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival in the United Arab Emirates — earn rating points to claim the Grandmaster title and warm up for next month’s Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary.

The reigning national champion has appeared like he’s close to accomplishing both as he brought down a big gun in GM Bassem Amin of Egypt to stay just half a point off the pace after four rounds of the nine-round tournament Monday night.

Quizon, seeded just 66th out of 217 participants, was clinical in pulling the rug from under the sixth-seeded Amin as he locked the doors in the queenside first where the latter was trying to force some action before unleashing a vicious kingside attack that won the former a piece.

When it was over, Quizon was already two pieces up and on the verge carving up Amin’s last line of defense before the latter resigned after the 36th move of their Sicilian encounter.

The win sent Quizon in a 25-player tie at No. 15 with three points, or just a shade behind the lead pack that was being spearheaded by the top seeded Iranian GM Amin Tabatabaeei with 3.5 points apiece.

Quizon was hoping to sustain his strong play against 13th seed GM Shamsiddin Vokhidov of Uzbekistan in the fifth round at the press time and earn enough rating points to breach the 2500-rating plateau that would seal him the GM title outright.

So far, Quizon has a live rating of 2469.1 from 2457 before the event started.

Quizon is also preparing for the Olympiad slated Sept. 10 to 22 in the Hungarian capital where he will join the national team consisting also of GMs Inno Sadorra and John Paul Gomez and IMs Paolo Bersamina and Jem Garcia with GM Eugene Torre as their non-playing coach.