GM Sadorra

BY: BOBBY ANG

(As published in Chess Piece, BusinessWorld, 28 March 2011)

Please allow me to congratulate Julio Catalino Sadorra on his third GM norm from the University of Texas-Dallas (UTD) Grandmaster Invitational Tournament.

First, a short backgrounder. The Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship is the foremost intercollegiate team chess championship in the Americas. This covers schools in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. For the past 15 years it has been dominated by the two schools University of Maryland Baltimore Country (UMBC) and University of Texas at Dallas (UTD).

UMBC was where our former junior standout Paolo del Mundo studied several years ago -- he was an essential part of their chess campaign and scored many crucial points for the UMBC team.

The man behind UTD chess is Tim Redman, a Professor of Literary Studies with a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Literature from the University of Chicago. He was the one who convinced the school administration to offer scholarships to promising chess players and as a consequence of this they built up a pretty strong team. In fact, in large part because of his success in scholastic chess Tim Redman became president of the United States Chess Federation (USCF) for two terms, 1981-1984 and 2000-2001, the only president to date who has served twice. He is also a FIDE International Arbiter.

I say all these nice things about Mr. Redman with mixed feelings, for he double-crossed us during the 2000 Istanbul Olympiad. The question of which federation to accredit as the official governing body of chess in the Philippines, whether it will remain the Philippine Chess Federation (PCF, this is the Art Borjal/Edgar de Castro group) or the National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP, Campo/myself/Eugene Torre etc), was to be taken up in the General Assembly to be held during the Olympiad.

Campo and I had a merienda with Mr. Redman and one of his delegates, Jim Eades (this is the guy who wrote Chess for Dummies, a great instructional book) to campaign for their support. We had very friendly discussions after which Mr. Redman promised that the USCF will support the NCFP. To my great disappointment, however, during the actual General Assembly not only did they vote against us but their delegate (I forget his name but he was a big guy) threatened to walk out if the NCFP won.

Well, the NCFP won. Illustrating his great diplomatic and political skills Campo arranged for a taxi to be brought to the hall to bring the delegate back to his hotel.

But I digress.

Early this month UTD organized a double-round Scheveningen training tournament for their chess team. The Scheveningen system is a method of organizing a chess match between two teams. Each player on one team plays each player on the other team. The team with the highest number of games won is the winner. This system is a popular way to create title norm opportunities.

The UTD top six players (GM Alejandro Ramirez, GM Ioan Cristian Chirila, IMs Julio Sadorra, Salvijus Bercys, Marko Zivanic and Wang Puchen) faced six seasoned veterans (International Grandmasters Alexander Shabalov, Dejan Bojkov, Julio Becerra, Valentin Iotov, Ray Robson and Magesh Panchanathan) with each member of one team playing every member of the opposing team twice. The final results:

GRANDMASTERS 42.5/72.0

1. GM Iotov, Valentin 8.0

2. GM Becerra, Julio 7.5

3. GM Bojkov, Dejan 7.5

4. GM Shabalov, Alexander 7.0

5. GM Robson, Ray 6.5

6. GM Panchanathan, Magesh 6.0

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS DALLAS TEAM 29.5/72.0

1. IM Sadorra, Julio 7.5

2. GM Ramirez, Alejandro 6.5

3. GM Chirila, Ioan 6.5

4. IM Bercys, Salvijus 4.0

5. IM Zivanic, Marko 3.5

6. IM Wang, Puchen 1.5

Ino Sadorra won four, drew seven and lost one for 7.5/12 and a performance rating of 2642. This is good enough for his third and final GM norm. His sole loss was to GM Robson in the 11th round -- perhaps he could not concentrate on the game because he had attained the norm in the previous round.

The last requirement, which is for him to attain a rating of 2500, will be fulfilled by May 2011, taking into consideration the ELO points gained during this tournament.

Here is the Philippines’ updated honor roll of GMs:

1. Eugene Torre

2. Rosendo Balinas, Jr. +

3. Rogelio Antonio, Jr.

4. Buenaventura Villamayor

5. Nelson Mariano II

6. Mark Paragua

7. Wesley So

8. Darwin Laylo

9. Jayson Gonzales

10. John Paul Gomez

11. Joseph Sanchez

12. Rogelio Barcenilla

13. Roland Salvador

14. Julio Catalino Sadorra

Waiting on the wings is IM Ronald Dableo, who already has all the required norms but still needs to get his rating up to the 2500 level (it is currently 2445).

Here is the GM norm-achieving win for Ino.

Sadorra, Julio Catalino (2475) -- Shabalov,Alexander (2590) [A11]
UT Dallas GM Invitational Richardson USA (10), 18.03.2011
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