Peruvians dazzle in American Continental

The Waca Waca (NOT Shakira's version), one of Bolivia's traditional dances, is a parody of Spanish bullfights. In the picture is another Bolivian dance, the "Tinku"

Performers dressed in typical Bolivian attire...

...and dazzling the players with their moves.
Women's long dresses are known as polleras.

The tournament favourite was definitely Lazaro Bruzon, from Cuba, with an imposing 2707 and almost 50 points ahead of his nearest rival. However there was a significant presence of Latin American grandmasters as well as one American grandmaster, Alexandr Lenderman, who had to decline his participation in the concurrent American Championship due to personal reasons.

The Cuban team enjoying a meal with the beautiful rain forest in the background.

Despite a draw on this game against Costa Rican IM Bernal Gonzalez,
Bruzon kept performing well throughout the first half.

The tournament saw relatively few surprises through the first half. Bruzon, Granda, Iturrizaga and Ortiz Suarez remained solidly on top and it seemed unlikely that anyone out of the starting top six players would make it to the qualifying spots.

GM Osvaldo Zambrana, Bolivia's best chess player,
came half a point shy of the World Cup qualification.

Iturrizaga vs. Ortiz Suarez was a draw on round nine, and it seemed that they would
both cruise towards the finish line

However things took a dramatic change in the final round. Bruzon was white against the much lower rated Jorge Cori and only needed a draw to qualify. The Peruvian would not let this happen as he took the game and the qualification spot for himself! Even more surprisingly, Jorge's sister Deisy was playing on board four against Iturrizaga, a GM 200 points ahead of her. The Peruvian spirit was strong that day as she also won her game and not only knocked out Iturrizaga from the top honors, but she herself qualified for the World Cup.

Deisy Cori's (above) claim to fame is her 2011 victory in the Women's Junior World Championship. Now she is one of two girls qualified for the Tromso World Cup, the other being Anna Ushenina who qualified by being the Women's World Champion.

As if that wasn't enough for the Peruvians, on board one Granda, who would have emerged victorious from the tournament with just a draw, won with black against Axel Bachmann and took first place a full point ahead of the field.

Granda showed his usual fighting chess and annihilated the opposition, earning him a cool USD $5000

Note that both Coris qualified despite finishing fourth and fifth because Granda had already qualified from the 2012 edition of this tournament. Third place went to Diego Flores. Both Bruzon and Iturrizaga will have a final opportunity to qualify for Tromso in their Zonal championship, which was supposed to be held last month.

Final Ranking after 11 Rounds