Canino stuns Vietnamese to bolster bid to become Woman Grandmaster

MANILA, Philippines, November 5 ------ Ruelle Canino could be in line as the country’s next Woman Grandmaster. It came to be after the 17-year-old Woman FIDE Master from Cagayan de Oro pulled off the biggest victory of the second round against sixth seed WIM Bach Ngoc Thuy of Vietnam and seized a share of the top spot in the the 6th ASEAN Individual Chess Championships-Gov. Henry Oaminal Cup at the Misamis Occidental Resort and Aquamarine Park in Ozamiz.

Canino sparkled in her victory over Bach and should be eyeing another big fish in another Vietnamese in WGM Hoang Thi Bao Tram, whom she the Cagayan de Oro lass was facing in the third round as of posting time. The victory kept Canino well entrenched at the helm alongside five others that included Hoang, Russian IM Evgenija Ovod, Mongolian WFM Batpelden Buyankhishig and Vietnamese WGMs Nguyen Thi Mai Hung and Nguyen Thi Thanh An.

This nine-round tournament is staking an outright WGM title to the champion. The Far Eastern University star has done it all — rule the national women’s champion and played in the World Chess Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary and took the Category B gold medal a year ago as the country’s youngest member of the team. And now she’s eyeing a bigger prize and becoming a WGM like one of her mentors — WGM Janelle Mae Frayna.

Interestingly, the top-seeded Frayna was half a point behind her following a win over Vietnam’s Pham Tran Gia Thu. The country’s bets in the premier open section, spearheaded by GM John Paul Gomez, meanwhile, stayed in title contention and half a point behind the pace-setting Indian IM V S Raahul, Vietnamese GM Tran Tuan Minh and Indonesian FM Fabian Glen Mariano, who have pristine scores of two points each.

Source: philstar.com