“Peon tocao, Peon tocao!” (touch move) These yells would reverberate every time the older players cry out in protest over moves being retracted over the chessboard. Delivered in singsong Chavacano, these exhortations remain the highlight of my Sunday afternoons when I first started becoming a member of Cavite City Chess Club. These senior players are old chess warriors and veterans of many battles both inside and outside the chessboard. One is a former governor of the province, a public prosecutor, a retired civil servant, businessman, while others are skilled artisans of the former Sangley Point Naval Base. They would not only discuss variations and chess history, but they would also talk about abstract concepts.
I was a cocky 14-year-old from the neighboring town looking for tougher competition. I became a member when I met one of its most prominent members, Vio Rollamas, an artist in an advertising agency, during the preparatory arrangements for the Buklod Bayan Chess tourney in 1974, which features games via telex for the finalists. He would do the illustrations for the nascent chess magazine, RP Chess.
From the last half of my fourth year in high school to my first two years in college, I would religiously go to the club every Sunday afternoon. The younger and middle age players play five-minute blitz while the senior members play skittle games. These three generations of chess players are an odd mix. Brought together by the love of chess, all they do is play from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. every Sunday. This strange aggrupation of characters would form the core of the club.
It all started long before in the late ‘50s. The club was an original charter member of the Philippine Chess Federation. Florencio Campomanes, the newly-minted national master and fresh from his post-graduate studies in the US, would drop by the club and play every time he would visit his mother’s family’s shoe shop, the famous Basa Shoes at the corner of P. Burgos and Romualdo St. in San Roque. Along with the late Horacio H. Rodriquez aka Nyol Teting (the club’s founder and Cavite’s governor in 1954-1955), these two would develop a lasting friendship, converse in Spanish, and of course play chess.
Acknowledged as the father of Philippine chess, Pocams or Campo (as he is more popularly known) single-handedly promoted the game of kings not only in the country but in other developing countries as well (Africa and the Middle East specifically) during his stint as FIDE president from 1982 to 1995. He would epitomize all that is great and not so great among our people.
When Fischer dethroned Spassky in 1972 and Eugene Torre became Asia’s first grandmaster in 1974, chess was at its most popular phase. During the Marlboro-sponsored international tournaments from 1973 to 1976, (tobacco companies were not yet banned in sports tournaments), the Philippines surpassed the Iron Curtain countries as the host of the strongest chess tournaments which culminated in our hosting the 1978 World Chess Championship held in Baguio and the Manila Chess Olympiad in 1992. These were made possible through the diplomatic savvy and brilliant brinkmanship of Campo.
He would court controversy when he halted the first Karpov-Kasparov championship match in 1985, leading to accusations of bias and that he is a KGB spy. Locally, his choices of protégés also raised eyebrows with the issue of arbitrariness and favoritism along with a graft case.
There were hits and misses of course. Eugene Torre personified discipline and dedication. I remember Campo’s dispatches from Nice, France, during the Olympiad in 1974 in the defunct Daily Express. Written in elegant prose, the journal cum reportage, made an impact to my impressionable 13-year-old mind. It narrated how the cash-strapped team managed to snatch 11th place (eclipsed later in 1988 when the country garnered eighth place in Thessalonica, Greece), and Torre became Asia’s first grandmaster. The “Making of a Grandmaster” series, which contained mundane musings and quotidian conquests on gut issues like food, accommodation, and transport to and from the playing venue, is above all an inspirational treatise on how a resource-challenged team/individual can overcome great odds and eventually succeed.
It is also worth noting that during his stint as FIDE president, Philippine chess stagnated as there was nobody to man the fort. We produced our third grandmaster only in 1993 in the person of Joey Antonio. Rosendo Balinas Jr. became the second grandmaster in 1976 in Odessa (the first non-Soviet to win on Russian soil along with Jose Raoul Capablanca in 1936 and Reuben Fine in 1937) without his imprimatur as their feud ended only before the death of the latter.
The lack of funding plagues everyone. Even when Eugene Torre qualified to the quarterfinals of the world championship cycle in 1982 (he was ranked No. 18 in the world then), there is no steady source of funds, unlike basketball where resources are endless. Grandmaster Wesley So is the most recent example. The current world No. 9 (he was for a time No. 2) left in exasperation for the US after promises remained just that—promises.
I remain Campo’s fan to this day, warts and all. Moreover, I agree with international master Petronio Roca when he introduced him as our special guest during the Dasmariñas Mixed Masters Tournament in 1999 as a Universal Man akin to Rizal having conquered far distant shores and people; proving to everyone that Filipinos are not pushovers and a mere nation of maids and servants but equal to anybody with regard to intellect, courage, and skill.
And this is not to pass judgment on the person but rather on the system. They did this to Bali, Wesley, Hidilyn, et al. They’re doing the same now to EJ Obiena; tomorrow who’s next?
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Danilo G. Benueza, 61, has served with the Department of Education for 19 years, and in between was an OFW and a writing consultant. He has returned to teaching.