Ranked 20th in a field of 52, the bespectacled Villamayor earlier dominated Zeyaad Janahi with the black pieces then bested Shaobin with the white to tie top seed Krishnan Sasikiran and S. S. Ganguly of India, Ghaem Maghami of Iran, Sergey Zagerbelny of Uzbekistan and Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh at the helm with two points apiece in this 9-round Swiss system tournament.
He will face Rahman in the third round.
The youthful Sasikiran blasted the only other Filipino GM in the fold – Eugene Torre – to arrange an early clash of the top two seeds — with Zagerbelny — in the third round of this event which also serves as the qualifier for next year’s world men’s championship.
GM-candidate Mark Paragua held fourth-ranked GM Utut Adianto of Indonesia to lead the 1.5-point scorers.
GM Joey Antonio was supposed to lead the Filipinos’ bid here but backed out at the last minute following a rift with the National Chess Federation of the Philippines over the use of a computer laptop which the chess body promised but failed to provide.