INTERNATIONAL Master Daniel Quizon of the Philippine caught a big fish in sixth seed Grandmaster Bassem Amin of Egypt in the fourth round Monday night to stay half a point off the pace in the Masters section of the 30th Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival.
Seeded 66th out of 217 participants, the Olympiad-bound 19-year-old Dasmarinas bet didn’t flinch amid a strong pressure put up by the heavily favored Amin in the opening to carve out a 36-move win in a Sicilian duel.
The win catapulted Quizon to a big 25-player logjam at No. 15 with three points, just half-a-point behind a 14-man lead pack led by top seed GM Amin Tabatabaeei of Iran.
Quizon was battling Uzbek GM Shamsiddin Vokhidov in the fifth round at press time of the nine-round tournament the former is using to earn rating points to achieve a 2500 rating and claim the GM title outright.
He is also using the meet as part of his preparations for the Olympiad set Sept. 10 to 22 in Budapest, Hungary where he will make his much-awaited debut and join teammates GMs Inno Sadorra, John Paul Gomez, and IMs Paolo Bersamina and Jem Garcia.
Quizon’s recent effort came just a few days after pulling off a solid 16th-place effort in the blitz section where he ended up scoring eight of the possible 11 points with impressive triumphs over GMs Mikheil Mchedlishvili of Georgia, Puria Darini of India and Yakubboev while drawing with GMs Volodar Murzin of FIDE’s refugee team and Vokhidov.
