In his first game against Dennis Lara, the 1st runner-up in the Palau Royal Resort rating chess tournament, he survived a relentless attack when Lara made a blunder.
After a few hours, he played against venue host Gene Pastrana where he got 2 rooks and a bishop against Pastrana's queen.
He is in extreme time pressure when he mated his adversary and jumped in joy and went wild as he became the early leader of the double round-robin event.
He was surprised to learn that Pastrana can't beat him by time forfeit because Pastrana didn't have enough materials to force mate and if his clock expires, Pastrana could draw.
After checking the clock, Dittrich had only 20 seconds remaining in his clock.
In the 3rd game of the day, 4th seed Roberto Hernandez couldn't sustain his initiative due to time pressure and lost to blitz chess specialist Tony Villa in more than 50 moves of Danish Gambit.
Top seed Menandro Manuel suffered another 1st round loss to 3rd seed Cyril Montel, Jr. while 2nd seed Jose Omega was beaten by 5th seed NM Manny Nedic.
And in the last game of the day, Villa clobbered Montel, Jr. to share the lead with Dittrich.
On Saturday, November 24, Jaime Guevarra will play whoever is available from 10am as he has to work at 1pm.
Lara, Arnel Pama, Paul Garcia and Hernandez will play whoever are available from 1:30-5pm.
Omega can come at PRR as visitor and play an official game against any available player during his free time and players from PRR can play at Dormitory 1 to maximize their playing hours against the top players of Palau.
Manuel and other players can do the same and PRR players will appreciate it.
Danny Dandoy and Michael Mercado of Aqua Water didn't show up in the opening day and they still have time to catch up in the 2nd week.
Villa will have a Christmas break vacation on December 16 and if the tournament is not yet finish at that time, it will be resumed on the 2nd week of January 2008.
Tia Belau Newspaper
Page 13
Volume 17
November 23-29, 2007
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