Arca trounces Thai IM to stay afloat in Bangkok chess tourney

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April 19, 2025 | 1:43pm

MANILA, Philippines — Christian Gian Carlo Arca continued to flash his potential as the country’s next Grandmaster behind Daniel Quizon as he downed Thai International Master Prin Laohawirapap to storm back to contention after six rounds of the Bangkok Chess Club Open in Thailand Friday night.

The 16-year-old Filipino FIDE Master sacrificed a pawn in the opening to create attacking chances and then later gave up a piece for a devastating onslaught that won him a pawn, which he used to carve out a 56-move win of a Caro-Kann Defense.

That catapulted the Panabo, Davao del Norte native into a seven-player chase pack with five points each, or just half a point behind co-leaders GM Evgeny Romanov of Macedonia and GM Surya Ganguly of India.

Another Philippine bet, Olympiad veteran IM Pau Bersamina, was in that same group that also had world challenger Nigel Short of England, Hungarian GM Jozsef Horvath, English GM Stephen Gordon and Malaysian FM Ang Ern Jie Anderson.

Bersamina clung to that pack after holding Indian GM Babu Lalit to a 19-move standoff of a Four Knights duel.

Somehow, it eased the pain of Arca’s stinging setback to Romanov the round before in a game where the former had drawing chances but blew it up due to his over eagerness.

With the exception of that defeat to Romanov, Arca has been impressive mostly after catching a couple of GMs in top seed GM Jan Gustafsson of Germany and Gordon.

Also in contention was IM Michael Concio, the champion of the side blitz event a few days ago who halved the point with Gustafsson to improve his total to 4.5 points.

Like Arca and Bersamina, Concio is also eyeing a GM norm.