Palawan Queen's Gambit: The lesson of adjusting

MANILA, Philippines – Palawan Queen’s Gambit coach Susan Neri believes that her team needs to fix their technical side issues in order to fully show what the distaff side can do in the All-Filipino conference of the Professional Chess Association of the Philippines that began last Saturday, January 16.

Palawan fell to Iloilo, 15-6, their debut match.

Despite the loss, the all-female squad made news when Woman International Master Shania Mendoza defeated Grandmaster Joey Antonio, 2-0 in rapid play. 

Chalking up points also in rapid play for Palawan were Cathy Secopito who defeatedKarl Ochoa, 2-0, and homegrown player Marife dela Torre who drew with counterpart Dennis Bernas, 1-1.

“For my assessment,” said Neri who is also the coach of the La Salle Women’s Chess team, “We’ll also focus on improving our technical side issues. Most of our games were lost because of disconnection and internet issues. Although we anticipated them, we tried our best to fix and adjust to our opponents.”

Added Neri, “For my part, it’s really challenging to coach online and I have to adapt to my coaching strategy”

The team huddled online after their initial match to take note on the match.

“What boosts our morale despite our defeat is the quality of wins which we got against strong players in the league like GM Joey Antonio.”