(1014) NEW ZEALAND CHESS MAGAZINE FEATURES 2006 PICC

1st PALAU INTERNATIONAL CHESS TOURNAMENT    by Paul Spiller

AFTER COMPETING in the 3rd IGB Dato Tan Malaysian Chess Championship, kiwi players Hilton Bennett and Paul Spiller traveled on to compete in the first ever International Chess Championship to be held in the Palau Islands (August 31- September 4, 2006).

 For those not familiar with the location of Palau (or Belau as it is known locally) it is approximately 1200 km east of Philippines and about two and a half hours flying time from Manila.

There are only a few possible routes to get to Palau, either flying via Manila (with a day stopover) as we did or via Guam out of Darwin. There is also an alternative route via Taiwan as well.

Palau, as we soon discovered, is a beautiful archipelago of islands surrounded by amazing coral atolls and beautiful water that defy descriptions.

Internationally ranked as one of the top diving locations in the world, not only for its abundance of tropical fish, sea creatures and brightly coloured corals, but also because of the large numbers of sunken World War Two wrecks that beckon beneath the surface.

Although Hilton and myself were not divers, we did take the opportunity to do a half day boat trip to explore this paradise and manage to do some swimming and snorkelling and catch a glimpse of the natural beauty.

The tournament was originally the idea of Oceania Zone President IA Gary Bekker in conjunction with local Palau chess player Roberto Hernandez. With Gary's enthusiasm to involve more of the Oceania Zone countries, successful tournaments have now been held in Papua New Guinea, Fiji and most recently Palau.

The aim of these tournaments is to give opportunities for the local players to gain FIDE ratings and to give some impetus to the development of chess in these countries and to encourage them to take a more active role in Oceania chess.

This has certainly been achieved with Fiji now about to hold its second Oceania Zone Championship in May 2007 after hosting the 2002 Zonal event and an International Championship in 2003.

It also looks likely that the tournament in Palau will become an annual event with the pledged support of the Philippine ambassador at the closing ceremony.

The kiwi duo finally arrived in Palau on August 30, the day before the tournament was scheduled to start. The initial venue was the newest and most luxurious hotel, the Palau Royal Resort, situated in Malakal Island apprixmately 4 km from the center of Koror.

The hotel has been built next to a lagoon with all the trappings of a 5-star resort including swimming pools, Dive Shop, Poolside Bar, private beach and separate Spa complex, complete with Balinese masseusses.

I mentioned that this was the initial venue because a quite bizarre event took place during our stay, which meant that the tournament venue had to be shifted back to the center of town and to a different hotel, namely the Palasia.

We were advised after the second day of play, that an important summit, namely the 1st Taiwan Pacific Allies Summit was to take place at PRR (Palau Royal Resort) and that most of the hotel facilities would be at the disposal of the Taiwanese President and his entourage and members of the delegations of the other 6 nations involved.

In fact, the hotel became an amazing hub of activity, buzzing with media including at least 5 or 6 film crews, newspaper reporters (we met the Reuters correspondent based in Taiwan) police (including 2 police launch patrols) security guards and various delegates and hangers on.

We later learnt that the Taiwanese alone had chartered two passenger jets to fly in their personnel. Anyway, all of this provided an interesting diversion to the happenings surrounding the tournament, which was in itself quite extraordinary.

The tournament finally became a reality after several months of uncertainty and was played as a 10-player round robin event using the standard FIDE time control of 90 minutes plus 30 seconds added per move.

To make up the field myself and Hilton were invited from New Zealand along with Filipino Marlon Bernardino who at FIDE 2170 was the top seed. Marlon is a well know personality in Manila and runs his own slot on the local radio.

 In fact, Gary Bekker managed to fit in a live radio interview on his way across to Palau and meet up with some of the top Filipino GMs including Eugenio Torre, Asia's first Grandmaster.

Marlon also carried out the now somewhat infamous Bobby Fischer interviews in Manila a few years ago, and gave us an interesting insight into the former world champion's personality.

International Arbiter and Oceania Chess President Gary Bekker (Australia) made up the fourth FIDE rated player necessary for the event to be FIDE rated.

The local players were a mixture of Filipino and Palau nationals and included Roberto Hernandez, Menandro Manuel, Manny Nedic, Gene Pastrana, Cyril Montel and Jose Omega.

The locals certainly made the overseas players feel very welcome and were most hospitable. On several occasions the players ended up at Gene Pastrana's shop in central Koror after the round to share a meal of fresh fish and rice.

Gene's shop is also the venue for the chess club where chess is played in an outdoor setting under an awning at the shop front!

On to the chess! With many of the local players having full time jobs, rounds have to be squeezed in to any available time slots, so some games were played quite late at night. Gary even managed to squeeze in 3 games during one day which was probably not the best for his chess.

The first 4 rounds were played at the PRR over the 31st August and 1st of September. Gary Bekker set the early pace after a first round draw with Marlon by 3 wins on the trot against Manuel, Pastrana and Nedic.

He was followed closely by Hilton, I and Marlon with 2 wins, 2 draws each. Hilton conceded draws to myself and Gene Pastrana; Marlon to Menandro Manuel and myself to Cyril Montel who played the unorthrodox reply 1. ... Nh6 to my 1. f4 Bird's Opening. A recommendation from GM Mark Paragua according to Marlon!

Hilton had also come close to losing against Menandro Manuel early on but Manuel couldn't find the correct continuation in time trouble and overstepped. Hilton's Budapest was getting a good workout and he won nicely against Manny Nedic in Round 3:

M. Nedic - H. Bennett (Round 3) Budapest Defence 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e5 3. dxe5 Ng4 4. Nf3 Bc5 5. e3 Nc6 6. a3 a5 7. Nc3 0-0 8. Be2 Re8 9. Ne4 Bf8 10. 0-0 Ngxe5 11. Ng3 nxf3+ 12. Bxf3 Ne5 13. Be3 Ra6 14. Bd2 d5 15. cxd5 Rg6 16. Bh5 Bg4 17. Bxg4 nxg4 18. h3 Nf6 19. Qa4 Qxd5 20. Rad1 b6 21. Bc3 Qe6 22. Bxf6 Rxf6 23. Rd4 Qc8 24. Rg4 Rd8 25. Qc4 Rg6 26. Rxg6 hxg6 27. Ne4 Qd7 28. Ng5 Bd6 29. Qh4 Be5 30. b3 Bf6 31. Qf4 Qe7 32. Ne4 Be5 33. Qg5 Qxg5 34. Nxg5 Rd3 35. a4 f6 36. Nf3 Bb2 37. Rb1 Rxb3 38. Nd4 Rb4 39. Nc2 Be3 40. Nxb4 axb4 41. Kf1 c5 42. Ke2 c4 43. Rf1 Ke7 44. Kd1 Ke6 45. Kc2 Kd5 46. f3 f5 47. Rd1+ Kc6 48. Rd8 Kc7 49. Re8 Bf6 50. e4 b3+ 51. Kb1 c3 52. exf5 c2+ 53. Kc1 Bg5+    0-1

My first round game against Jose Omega: P. Spiller - J. Omega  Round 1  Bird's Opening   1. f4 c5 2. b3 d6 3. Bb2 Nf6 4. Nf3 e6 5. e3 a6 6. a4 Nbd7 7. Be2 Be7 8. 0-0 b6 9. Na3 Bb7 10. Qe1 Qc7 11. Qg3 g6 13. Ng5 Rf8 14. Qxh6 0-0-0 15. Qb3 Qb8 16. Bf3 Nd5 17. Nc4 Bxg5 18. fxg5 Qc7 19. Qg3 e5 20. Bg4 Kb8 21. Bxd7 Qxd7 22. Nxd6 Ka7 23. Nxb7 Kxb7 24. Bxe5 Rde8 25. a5 Re6 26. axb6 Rxb6 27. Qf3 Ka7 28. Ra5 Re6 29. Rfa1 Nc7 30. Rxc5 Rc8 31. Bxc7 Rxc7 32. Rxc7+ Qxc7 33. c4 Re5 34. Qf6 Re6 35. Qd4+ Kb7 36. b4 Rd6 37. Qe4+ Ka7 38. b5 Qd7 39. Rxa6+ Rxa6 40. bxa6 41. Qd5 Qxd5 42. exd5 Kb6 43. Kf2 Kc5 44. e4    1-0

As previously outlined, the tournament now had to shift venues to a more centrally located Palasia Hotel. The Hotel Manager provided us with the exclusive us of Ming's Restaurant for the remainder of the event.

One slight glitch during the next few evening rounds was the loss of power at around 6 pm every night when everything was plunged into darkness until the hotel generators kicked in.

Palau had recently suffered major power failure during a tropical storm which resulted in loss of one of its main generators. This affected to local EFTPOS capabilities, ATM machines and banks and no doubt adversely affected the local economy.

Round 5 saw the important Spiller-Bekker clash. Gary played a slight inaccuracy on move 15 which allowed me to generate some kingside attacking chances:

P. Spiller - G. Bekker  Round 5  Bird's Opening  1. f4 d5 2. b3 Nf6 3. e3 g6 4. Bb2 Bg7 5. Nf3 0-0 6. Be2 c5 7. 0-0 Nc6 8. Ne5 Qc7 9. Bf3 e6 10. Nxc6 Qxc6 11. d3 Rd8 12. Nd2 b5 13. a4 a6 14. Qe1 (Threatens Qh4 winning a piece) Bb7 15. Qh4 Nh5? (better would have been Ne8) 16. Be5! (This forces the f file open because of the threat of Bxh5 & Qxh5 winning a pawn) Bxe5 17. fxe5 Ng7 18. Qf4 (threatens 19. axb5 axb5 20. Rxa8 Bxa8 21. Bxd5! followed by Qxf7 winning) Qe8 19. g4 Qe7 20. h4 Qxh4 21. Kg2 Ne8 22. Rh1 Qe7 23. Rxh7 Kxh7 24. Rh1+ Kg8 25. Qh6  1-0

Hilton joined me on 4/5 by defeating Jose Omega while Marlon took an early draw with Gene Pastrana to be half point further back with Gary on 3.5

Round 6 saw the longest game of the tournament unfold between Hilton and Roberto Hernandez. After an early win of material, Hilton looked to be in control but his opponent generated some surprising counter chances. The game see-sawed and looked to be heading for a draw which Hilton offered. Roberto however thought he had better but blundered badly and lost. Marlon Bernardino also won well in a tactical encounter with Cyril Montel:

M. Bernardino - C. Montel  Round 6  Reti Opening  1. d4 c6 2. g3 d5 3. Bg4 Bg4 4. 0-0 Nf6 5. c4 Nbd7 6. b3 g6 7. Bb2 Bg7 8. d3 0-0 9. Nbd2 Rc8 10. h3 Be6 11. Nd4 Ne8 12. Nxe6 fxe6 13. d4 e5 14. cxd4 exd4 15. Nf3 c5 16. Ng5 Nc7 17. Ne6 Nxe6 18. dxe6 Nf6 19. Bxb7 Rb8 20. Bg2 Rb6 21. Rc1 Qd6 22. Qc2 Rc8 23. Rfd1 Rbb8 24. Qc4 Rb4 25. Qxb4 cxb4 26. Rxc8+ Bf8 27. Rxd4 Qxa2 28. Rdd8 Kg7 29. e3! Qa6 30. Rxf8 Qxa2 31. Bxf6+ exf6 32. Bd5 Qd1+ 33. Kg2 Qd3 34. Rcd8 a5 35. Rf7+ Kh6 36. Rdd7      1-0

I drew on the black side of a Sicilian Dragon against Menandro Manuel, who was emerging as the strongest of the local players.

The critical round 7 and 8 encounters saw Hilton defeat Gary and draw with Marlon. Marlon defeat Manny Nedic while I had draws with Gene Pastrana and Manny Nedic.

I also played my round 9 game against Marlon earlier which was also drawn quickly. This left Hilton with his round 9 game to play against Cyril  Montel with Marlon and myself already having  completed all our games and the scores standing at Hilton 6.5/8 (a game in hand), Marlon 6.5/9 and Paul 6/9.

Hilton secured the title of Palau Open Chess Champion when Cyril accepted his draw offer in the final round.

In conclusion, Hilton throughly deserved his win which  was achieved by a display of tenaciousness when under pressure and hard work in preparation for his opponents. His results here and in Malaysia should see a significant increase in his FIDE rating.

The final scores: Hilton Bennett (NZ)                  7.0/9
                            Marlon Bernardino (PHI)          6.5/9
                            Paul Spiller (NZ)                       6.0/9
                            Menandro Manuel (PAL)           4.5/9
                            Gary Bekker (AUS)                   4.5/9
                            Gene Pastrana (PAL)                3.5/9
                            Cyril Montel, Jr. (PAL)              3.5/9
                            Jose Omega (PAL)                    3.5/9
                            Manny Nedic (PAL)                   3.0/9
                            Roberto Hernandez (PAL)        3.0/9

The official prize giving was held in the Palasia Hotel with the Philippine's Ambassador to Palau, Mr. Ramoncito Marino, presenting the prizes to the players. Menandro Manuel won the prize for the best result by a local player.

Hilton, as winner, was presented with a magnificent carved wooden "storyboard" fish engraved with a scene depicting conservation of the Ocean and environment.

The final outcome of the tournament was very positive for all the local players who will all gain FIDE ratings in the 1700-1900 range. Mr. Marino also pledged his support for the tournament in the future years which may become known as the Ambassador's Cup.

In conclusion, expression of thanks are due to Gary for his financial support of this event and his continuing support of the development of chess in Oceania and also for the local players and arbiters for their hospitality and President Sno Temaungil who ensured the smooth running of the event.

I can thoroughly recommend a trip to Palau if the event is held in 2007 for those who have an adventurous spirit and want to experience something different!

Source: New Zealand Chess (Official magazine of the New Zealand Chess Federation (Inc)
            Volume 33    Number 5    October 2006
            Reported by: Paul Spiller

The players and arbiter are shown at the opening of the tournament at the Palau Royal Resort.
(Photo by Roberto Hernandez)