BUDAPEST, Hungary — Philippine pride started in the world of chess with Eugene Torre gaining the honor of being Asia’s first grandmaster (GM) and 15 others following suit and now, after more than a decade, the country has its seventeenth GM in the person of 20-year-old Daniel Quizon.

After a long wait of 13 years, Quizon nailed the coveted GM title by beating Georgian grandmaster Igor Efimov at the 45th Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) Chess Olympiad held at the Budapest Olympic Center (BOK) Sports Hall in Budapest, Hungary. and breaching the 2500-rating plateau during the early Sunday, Sept. 15 (Philippine time).

The chess prodigy, who hails from Cavite, breached the 2500-Elo rating plateau, a feat last achieved by a Filipino in 2011 by Oliver Barbosa and again by Richard Bitoon. Six years later, Filipina woodpusher Janelle Mae Frayna became the country’s first and only woman grandmaster.

At a young age, Quizon managed to thrive as an elite chess player in various tournaments which prepared him to clinch an International Master (IM) title after emerging victorious at the Eastern Asian Juniors Open Championships in Gangneung, South Korea in August 2018.

The following year, he qualified for the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, where he fell short of claiming a spot on the podium. Despite this, the Cavite-born woodpusher was recognized by the San Miguel Corporation-Philippine Sportswriters Association as the MILO Junior Male Athlete of the Year in 2019, alongside award-winning Filipina tennis player Alex Eala.

Quizon continued with his winning ways and in the same year, he bagged gold by securing 8.5 points from nine rounds in the under-16 standard competitions of the Eastern Asia Youth Chess Championships in Bangkok, Thailand.

He then qualified for the Chess World Cup in 2021 and ended his campaign in the first round after losing to Russian-Canadian GM Evgeny Bareev. Undeterred by this setback, though, Quizon honed his skills to finally achieve his dream of completing the three required GM norms—a high-level of performance in chess tournaments.

Quizon earned his first GM norm in February last year during the AQ Prime ASEAN Chess Championship and bagged his second in December of the same year after winning the Open division title at the Eastern Asia Juniors and Girls Chess Championship. He then secured the final norm during the last leg of the Hanoi Grandmaster Chess Tournament in Vietnam in March 2024.