SEEKING greener pastures abroad to raise his family with two young children to feed, struggling father Fide Master Rustum Tolentino seems to find his luck in the Middle East with a decent amount of chess purses setting him ablaze across the 64-square board.
After winning the 29th Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival Open Division last August, the 41-year-old Tolentino went on to dominate the B category of the Qatar Masters Open 2023 held October 10-20 at the Lusail Sports Arena in Doha, Qatar.
The only titled player among seven Filipinos competing in the 2300 and below Fide-rated nine-round Swiss tourney, the Cagayan de Oro City pride Tolentino (the second seed with 2272 elo rating) terrorized the 92-man field with a near-sweep finish, victimizing the likes of the top-seed International Master Mahmood Lodhi (2274 elo rating) and the pair of Fide Masters Zoubaier Amdouni (2211) and Massinas Djabri (2256).
Tolentino strung up eight-straight wins as he also listed Nadia Fawas, Meshal Alhejab, Mohammed Khalfan Al, Mohamad Habash, and Hamood Al Busaidi among his casualties before he settled for a draw with Shrayan Majumder in the ninth and final round to amass 8.5 points.
“Working here in the Middle East is such a blessing because chess tournaments back home are scarce and have only minimal cash prizes that it’s hard to survive for a family man who just relies on pure chess earnings,” said Tolentino, currently the lead coach at Chess Lab in Dubai, via an online interview.
“I’m quite comfortable in classical chess with the Qatar Open’s standard time control of 90 minutes and 30 seconds increment that now rarely exists in the Philippines thus affecting the quality performance of Filipino players when campaigning abroad. I hope that my recent victories could inspire and attract some sponsors so I could join prestigious events in Europe with International Master and Grandmaster norms at stake,” added the former National Shell Active junior champion Tolentino who received 2,500 US dollars on top of the elegant championship trophy with his performance rating of over 2600.
Tolentino was a full point ahead of India’s Mahumder (7.5 pts) in second place as Emirati junior chesser FM Ammar Sedrani finished third with seven points.
A plethora of monumental upsets, however, spoiled the main event of the Qatar Masters with world number one Magnus Carlsen of Norway falling to 16th place after being defeated twice by lowly-rated opponents.
Uzbek players GM Nodirbek Yakubboev and GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, the 2019 world rapid titlist, made a shocking 1-2 finish in third edition of the $110,000 Qatar Masters Open A that also saw the elite GM Hikaru Nakamura of the USA relegated to fifth-place behind third-placer GM S.L Narayanan of India and GM Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan.
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