LAPU-Lapu City’s Jerish John Velarde was off to a decent start in the blitz competition of the ongoing Asia Youth Chess Championships 2018 in Thailand.
Velarde, who won a bronze in the rapid event but struggled in the standard competition, scored 3.5 points in the first five rounds of the nine-round competition to place 10th in the current rankings.
The 12-year-old Velarde beat Hongkong’s Cyrano Desrosiers, 68th-seed Yu Zili of China and ninth-seed Candidate Master (CM) Huy Phuoc Bui of Vietnam in the first to third rounds, respectively.
He lost to seventh seed CM D. Gukesh of India in the fourth round and settled for a draw with second-seed CM Quoc Hy Nguyen of Vietnam in the fifth.
He is set to play against Wenhang Jing of China in the sixth round.
CM Gukesh is currently at the top spot with 5.0 points followed by 11th-seed CM Aditya Bagus Arfan of Indonesia with 4.5 points and 19th-seed CM Minh Hieu Hoang of Vietnam with 4.5 points, too.
In the standard event, Velarde continued to fall in the rankings, now at 33rd place after losing to CM Huy Phouc Bui of Vietnam in the eighth round.