CEBUANO Jerish John Velarde finished 11th place in the under-nine division of the recently concluded FIDE World Schools Championships 2015 in Pattaya, Thailand.
The eight-year-old Velarde, who was ranked 56th in the tournament, finished with 6.0 points in the nine-round competition, which is just his second international campaign. He won four matches against higher-seeded opponents and also settled for four draws.
Velarde’s first international tournament was the ASEAN Age-Group Chess Championships in Macau, China last year. He won two gold medals there.
The Lapu-Lapu-native finished the eighth round with a draw against third-seed Candidate Master (CM) Leon Luke Mendonca of India and won in the ninth round against 55th-seed Noppakun Promchan of Thailand.
Top-seed Ilya Makoveev emerged the best wood pusher in the under-nine division by scoring 8.5 points followed by Romania’s Lulian-Mihai Anghel (7.0) and Hong Kong’s Dong Michael Deng Yu (6.7).