Chess Piece: The P1-million first prize.

Last Wednesday, 22 March 2000, the First Pambansa Millennium Grand Prix was kicked off by top officials of the Philippine Chess Federation (PCF). As announced by the PCF this will consist of a series of knockout matches patterned after the FIDE World Chess Championships held last year. The venue will be the headquarters of the Philippine National Bank located near Roxas Boulevard.

There shall be six rounds of knockout matches comprising of two-game mini-matches with each player given two hours for the first 40 moves and then one hour sudden death to finish the game. If the scores are level after the regular games, then two tie breaks shall be played with 30 minutes each on the clock. In case it is still tied then a set of 15-minute games will be played, followed by another set, this time with 5 minutes each if the tie is still not broken.

What will happen here is that in round one 128 players will be ranked according to their chess rating, and then No. 1 will be matched against No. 65, No. 2 against 66, No. 3 versus No. 67, and so on and so forth. This same pairing method will be used for each succeeding round.

First-round losers (64 players) will receive P3,000 each;

Second-round losers (32 players) will receive P6,000 each;

Third-round losers (16 players) will receive P9,000 each;

Fourth-round losers (8 players) will receive P18,000 each;

Fifth-round losers (4 players) will receive P36,000 each; and

Sixth-round losers (2 players) will receive P72,000 each. four-game match to decide who will go home with the P144,000 runner-up prize and who will celebrate with the first prize of ONE MILLION PESOS (P1,000,000).

Some people have commented on the disparity in the prize money between the first two places. It is a pity that aside from the first prize sponsor (to be further elaborated below) the Philippine Chess Federation (PCF) was not able to tap any other …