THE MOST FAMOUS CHESS PLAYERS FROM PHILIPPINES

This makes Philippines the birth place of the 29 most number of Chess
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Players behind Norway and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

1. Eugenio Torre (1951 - )

With an HPI of 51.17, Eugenio Torre is the most famous Filipino Chess
Player.  His biography has been translated into 15 different languages on
Wikipedia.
Eugenio “Eugene” Torre (born November 4, 1951) is a Filipino chess
player. In 1974, at 22 years old, he became the first Asian to qualify for
the title Grandmaster by winning the silver medal in the 21 Chess
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Olympiad in Nice, France. He is considered the strongest chess player

the Philippines produced during the 1980s and 1990s, and played for the
Philippines on board 1 in seventeen Chess Olympiads. In a tournament in Manila in 1976, Torre was then
the only one to beat the then-reigning World Champion Anatoly Karpov in a game that has become part
of Filipino chess history. In 1982 he gained a spot in the World Chess Championship candidate’s
matches, where he lost to Zoltan Ribli. He served as Bobby Fischer’s second in the 1992 match against
Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia. He currently plays for the Rizal Towers of the Professional Chess
Association of the Philippines.

2. Caoili (1986 – 2020)

With an HPI of 50.10, Arianne Caoili is the 2 most famous Filipino
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Chess Player.  Her biography has been translated into 18 different

languages.
Arianne Bo Caoili ( kah-WEE-lee; 22 December 1986 – 30 March 2020)
was a Filipino-Australian chess player. She held the FIDE title of
Woman International Master, won the Oceania women’s chess
championship in 2009 and competed in seven Women’s Chess
Olympiads. Outside of chess, she was a financial consultant, and served
as advisor to Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan.
 3. Wesley Barbasa So (1993 - )
With an HPI of 44.78, Wesley So is the 3 most famous Filipino Chess
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Player.  His biography has been translated into 30 different languages.

Wesley Barbasa So (born October 9, 1993) is a Philippine-born American chess grandmaster, the
inaugural and current World Fischer Random Chess Champion and a two-time, and the current, U.S.
Chess Champion (in 2017 and 2020). He is also a three-time Filipino Chess Champion. On the March
2017 FIDE rating list, he was ranked number two in the world and had an Elo rating of 2822, making him
the fifth-highest rated player in history. A former chess prodigy, So became the youngest player to pass a
2600 Elo rating in October 2008, breaking the record previously held by Magnus Carlsen. This record has
since been broken by John M. Burke. In early 2013, So passed 2700 and in January 2017 he became the
11 player to pass 2800 Elo. So represented the Philippines until transferring to the United States in 2014.
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He won the 2015 Bilbao Chess Masters, the 2016 Grand Chess Tour title after claiming victory in the
Sinquefield Cup and London Chess Classic, and the 2017 Tata Steel Masters. He represented the US on
board 3 at the 42 Chess Olympiad, winning team and individual gold. So became the inaugural official
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Fischer Random world champion, on 2 November 2019, after defeating Carlsen 13½–2½ to win the FIDE
World Fischer Random Chess Championship.