The Philippines’ Daniel Quizon showed incredible endgame grit as he stunned 11th seed Uzbek Grandmaster Abdimalik Abdisalimov to barge into the top five after the eighth and penultimate round of the 30th Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival in United Arab Emirates Friday night.

The Olympiad-bound 20-year-old International Master from Dasmariñas outplayed Abdisalimov in a battle of passed pawns as the Filipino ended up with the faster ones in carving out a 48-move victory in their super-sharp Sicilian duel.

The smashing win sent the reigning national champion from the fringes of the top 10 straight to the top five alongside six others with six points, or just half a point off the four-player lead group of Uzbek GMs Nodirbek Yakubboev, Shamsiddin Vokhidov, FIDE’s GM David Paravyan and Indian GM Leon Luke Mendonca.

Quizon was battling 10th seed S L Narayanan in the last round at press time, hoping for another mammoth victory that would give the former a shot at a possible podium finish in the ultra-tough nine-round, 122-player tournament.

More importantly, it should earn him more rating points and inch closer to breaching the 2500-rating plateau and claiming the GM title.

At present, Quizon has zoomed to 2482.8 from 2457, or just 17.2 points away from joining the GM ranks.

If he can’t achieve the feat in Abu Dhabi, Quizon will have all the chances to do it in the FIDE World Chess Olympiad slated 10 to 22 September in Budapest, Hungary.

There, Quizon will team up with GMs Julio Catalino Sadorra and John Paul Gomez and IMs Paolo Bersamina and Jan Emmanuel Garcia with GM Eugene Torre as their coach.