SAN FRANCISCO, Agusan del Sur (MindaNews / 13 October) — A 9-year old boy from Trento, Agusan del Sur who won a chess blitz competition last month is seen to be another Wesley So in the making.
Gabriel Givero, a Grade 3 pupil of Trento West Central Elementary Special Education Center, bagged the championship in five minutes and three seconds in the 1st Mayor Seth Frederick Jalosjos National Youth and Schools Chess Championship on September 16-24 in Dapitan City.
He won eight of nine games of the competition while the second placer earned 6.5 points.
Blitz chess, commonly known as speed chess, refers to a game of chess that has a fast time control.
Givero placed fourth in the standard chess competition.
He won seven out of 10 games like the second and third placers but the quotient system worked against him.
Raffy Pagkaliwagan, Givero’s trainer-coach, said he is confident that the boy could become a national champion at 12, almost the same age when So started to rise to fame in chess.
At 14, So became the youngest Filipino ever to earn the title of grandmaster, the highest status conferred by the world chess organization FIDE. In 2014, however, he transferred to the United States and started representing that country in chess tournaments starting that year and until today.
So cited lack of support from the National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP) as the reason for changing his FIDE nationality.
Like Givero, So was nine years old when he started competing in junior tournaments and became champion in the 2003 Philippine National Chess Championships in the Under 10 section.
Pagkaliwagan, however, said they will not allow Givero to experience the same treatment that So received from NCFP.
“What happened to Wesley was a lesson learned. NCFP assured us this will not happen to Gabriel who saw his great potential when he becomes professional in the years ahead,” the trainer, who is a licensed national chess arbiter, said.
Givero said he started to become interested in chess when he was two years old. He said he became curious while watching tournaments on YouTube that he tried playing with a computer-generated opponent to hone his skills.
Gabriel started playing chess tournaments at school at five years old, when he was in Kindergarten II. He went on to join tournaments outside his school and became a champion at eight.
“I saw the brilliant moves of Wesley and I studied hard how he did it,” he said.
His mother Rachel Givero, a Music, Arts, Physical Education, and Health teacher at Trento National High School, recalled she saw his son playing chess at 2.5 years old with a computer prompting her to buy him a magnetic chess board.
She believed his son is a gifted child since she noticed his fast cognitive development when he was only five days old.
He can draw the main features of the world map and has a deep interest in astronomy, his mother said.
She said classical music was Gabriel’s lullaby when he was an infant and she believes this had helped in his mental development.
“He needs proper development guidance from a psychologist as a preparation when he will level up his competition,” she said.
“Our goal is to make him a young chess grandmaster at the right time,” she added. (Chris V. Panganiban/MindaNews)