WORLD Chess Olympiad-bound Janelle Mae Frayna, Jan Jodilyn Fronda and Ruelle Canino made significant gains with solid performances in the Sparkassen Trophy tilt in Dortmund, Germany over the weekend.
Frayna, the country’s first and only Woman Grandmaster so far, beat German FIDE Master Timo Kuppers in the ninth and final round to finish with 5.5 points for a share of 37th place.
Fronda fell to German International Master Gerlef Meins in the last round and wound up with the same score as Frayna.
From their performance, Frayna earned 23 ELO rating points and should have her current rating rising to 2185 from 2162 while Fronda jumped from 2089 to 2140 after gaining 51 rating points.
It came more than a week after their impressive finish in Vlissingen, the Netherlands, where Frayna finished tied for 13th with 6.5 points and Fronda in a group at No. 16 with six points.
Canino, 16, was equally impressive as she ended up with five points despite defaulting her first three games after some travel hitch and losing her fourth-round duel with India’s Arun Manukonda.
She earned 96 rating points and should improve from 1908 to 2004.
The next stop for the troika, whose trip is financed by the Philippine Sports Commission and backed by the National Chess Federation of the Philippines, is the Open Internacional d’escacs Santis-Ciutat de Barcelona scheduled Aug. 23 to Sept. 1 in Spain.
From there, they will return home on Sept. 3, rest and join the national team seeing action in the biennial Olympiad edition scheduled Sept. 10 to 22 in Budapest, Hungary.
