(245) SMILE AND SAY CHESS

ROBERTO Hernandez is also writing about chess in The International Filipino, a once a month magazine, entitled "Smile and say Chess".

This is the first issue:

Roberto Hernandez is currently the Chairman of Knights and Rooks Chess Club (Palau) that was founded in September 15, 2002.

He pioneered chess tournaments in Palau in 2002 while working as a pianist/DJ.

He also writes a chess and music column at Tia Belau, Palau first newspaper.

The 2002 All-Filipino Chess tournament in Palau on June 09, 2002 was the first of its kind and and became annual leading to the attainment of national chess rating for local and Filipino players in the Pacific island nation in the succeeding years.

Now, 28 Palau chess players are listed at www.fide.com and 21 of them have international rating from as low as 1250 to as high as 1863, 1875, 1922 and 1943, which are among the top in other Oceania countries.

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To be in Turkish Olympic Chess Team, the first qualification to be accepted in the men team is --YOU MUST BE BELOW 30 YEARS!

In Turkey, there are lots of youngsters who are very good in chess that's why they are getting the younger players to play in Olympiad, European Championship, etc.

So, to qualify for a Turkish team, you must be below 30 years old.

What about the qualification in the Philippine men team?

According to GM Eugene Torre, as long as you still have an erection, you can still qualified to Philippine men team!

He said even though he's more than 60 years old, he can still play for Philippine team because he's still got an erection!


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By the way, there will be a 2nd Outstanding OFW at the Philippine Embassy (Koror) in July before they closed down.

The Embassy received a lot of complaints because there are still a lot of outstanding OFWs that were not included in the first awarding.

Maybe Amante Caballero will be one to be selected.

Amante has been in Palau for 19 years and hasn't been on vacation for 19 years also.

He worked as bus driver for tourists from the Palau airport to the KB bridge when it fell and paralyzed Palau for a few days. He drove the tourists for free to help Palau recover from the disaster.


Source: The International Filipino Magazine
           July 2012 Issue
           Page 9
           Superstar Column