GENERAL SANTOS CITY—Young International Master Christian Gian Carlo Arca jumped to a share of the lead with three others following huge back-to-back wins Thursday heading into the penultimate round of the prize-rich Manny Pacquiao International Chess Open at the Family Country Hotel here.
The only teenaged fighter in the company of battle-tested men, Arca, 17, took down second seed GM Pa Iniyan of India in a marathon 71-move sixth round duel and still had enough stamina to win a highly tactical battle against compatriot GM Daniel Quizon in the pivotal seventh.
His double victory enabled him to join erstwhile solo leader GM Novendra Priasmoro, fourth seed GM Arkadij Naiditsch of Bulgaria and ninth seed GM Platon Galperin of Sweden at the top going into the final two rounds. All have 5.5 points.
Arca was playing black against Naiditsch in Round Eight while Galperin was handling white against Priasmoro at press time Friday, even as six other five pointers were on hot pursuit for the $20,000 top purse for first place put up by boxing legend Manny Pacquiao, himself a chess enthusiast.
Tied for fifth to 10th place, half a point behind, were fifth seed GM Timur Gareyev, sixth seed N.R. Visakh of India, seventh seed Li Min Peng of Singapore, eighth seed Vitaly Sibuk of Sweden, 2024 Pacquiao International Open champion IM Arif Abdul Hafiz of Indonesia and GM Nguyen Duc Hoa of Vietnam.
Naiditsch and Galperin were still unbeaten with four wins and three draws. Naiditsch dashed the upset hopes of veteran Filipino IM Chito Garma in the seventh, winning with black of a Three Knights opening. Galperin, a 22-year-old Ukrainian-born player now donning Swedish flag since 2023 after escaping the February 2022 Russian invasion of his country, beat third seed Jingyao Tin of Singapore.
After losing to journeyman Alexis Emil Maribao in the second round, Arca has strung four wins and a draw in the last five rounds, including a fighting, morale-boosting game with top seed super Grandmaster Johan-Sebastian Christiansen of Norway (Elo 2659) in the fourth round.
Against Quizon, the last and only grandmaster the Philippines has produced in the last 25 years, Arca was aggressive, playing the Reti game with dynamic play in the queenside.
Coinciding with the 87th Kalilangan Festival of this city, Pacquiao’s tournament has attracted one of the strongest nine-round Swiss system tournament ever held in the Philippines. 16 Grandmasters from 13 countries have joined the affair in the southernmost tip of the Philippines.
