So draws Indian GM; Aronian secures Tata Steel chess crown

MANILA, Philippines — Filipino Grandmaster Wesley So settled for a draw even as Armenian GM Levon Aronian clinched the 76th Tata Steel Chess MastersTournament with still a round to go in the 76th Tata Steel Chess Tournament.

The 20-year-old So split the point with Indian GM Pentakala Harikrishna after 31 moves of a Ruy Lopez Berlin in the penultimate 10th round Saturday and stayed on course for a high finish in the 12-man Category 20 (Elo 2743 average) tournament dominated by the top-seeded Aronian (Elo 2812).

Living up to his world No.2 billing, Aronian downed Cuban GM Leineir Dominguez in 42 moves of another Ruy Lopez to pad his total to 8.0 points, beyond reach of pursuers GM Anish Giri of the Netherlands and GM Sergey Karjakin of Russia, both with 6.0 points after drawing their Catalan encounter.

Trailing them at 5.5 points were So, Harikrishna, Caruana, who bowed to German GM Arkadij Naiditsch; and Dominguez.

When they agreed to a truce, So and Harikrishna had six pawns, a rook and a bishop each.

To gain a share of second or third place, So (Elo 2719) needs to beat Caruana in Sunday’s 11th and final round. A closing victory will boost the Webster University sophomore’s live Fide rating, which currently stands at 2736.8, good for 20th place in the world.

Other 10th-round matches saw Israeli GM Boris Gelfand subdue Van Wely and American GM Hikaru Nakamura tame Hungarian GM Richard Rapport. Roy Luarca