DEL MUNDO IS U.S. OPEN CO-CHAMP

FOLLOWING his recent first place win at the World Open chess in Philadelphia, Anton Paolo del Mundo was tied for first place together with five grandmasters and one international master at the US Open held at the Crown Plaza in Cherry Hill, New Jersey held from July 31 to August 5.

Playing brilliantly, Del Mundo racked five straight wins in the last 5 rounds to score 7.5 points out of nine rounds and tied with GMs Alexander Shabalov, Boris Gulko, Sergey Kudrin, Michael Rhode and IM Benjamin Finegold. Trailing by half a point going to the last round, Del Mundo won his game against rising star John Rouleau of Maryland but caught up with the GMs who ended with draws despite an apparent effort by most of them to go for solo first.

Del Mundo has recently radically changed his playing style. He has not been playing for about two years after the Minnesota HB Global Challenge in 2005 where he won the Under-24 title. Del Mundo is a software engineer, and a graduate of the University of Maryland.

After preparing for the tournament, Del Mundo said that he has improved his game with "a better positional understanding." Some of his games can be seen at monroi.com which offered live coverage of the US Open.

In his game with Rouleau, Del Mundo adopted a hypermodern style and allowed Rouleau to attack with his black pieces, but with most of its queenside pieces undeveloped. Rouleau resigned when Del Mundo sacrificed a knight then a rook, but taking the pieces was worse for Rouleau. Rouleau resigned after 27 moves.

Another Filipino, IM Enrico Sevillano of California, showed a strong finish with 6.5 points. He was stopped from contending for the top prize when he lost to GM Michael Rohde in the penultimate round.

(Report from MARLON BERNARDINO).