So shares 4th place, rises to world No. 19

Final standings: 8.0 points—L. Aronian; 6.5—A. Giri, S. Karjakin; 6.0—W. So, F. Caruana, L. Dominguez; 5.5—P. Harikrishna; 5.0—L. Van Wely, H. Nakamura; 4.5—B. Gelfand; 3.5—R. Rapport, A. Naiditsch

SO: Posts live Fide rating of Elo 2737.7

Wary of each other’s ability, Filipino Grandmaster Wesley So and Italian GM Fabiano Caruana opted to draw their final game Sunday as both landed in the upper half of the 76th Tata Steel Chess Masters Tournament in the Netherlands.

So and Caruana wound up with 6.0 points each and shared fourth to sixth places with Cuban GM Leinier Dominguez in the Category 20 (average Elo 2743) event won by top-seeded Armenian GM Levon Aronian with 8.0 points.

Handling white, So did try to topple Caruana, but the world No. 6 proved to be too tough to crack.

They agreed to split the point after 31 moves of a Grunfeld (Modern Main Line), with So parading two bishops and a knight against Caruana’s rook and bishop plus an isolated pawn.

Despite drawing his last two games in the 12-man tournament, the 20-year-old So still managed to climb the Fide ladder from world No. 28 (Elo 2719) to No. 19 with his live rating of 2737.7.

So again proved his mettle against some of the world’s best, beating Hungarian GM Richard Rapport (2691) in the first round, Israeli GM Boris Gelfand (2777) and GM Loek Van Wely (2672) in the ninth round en route to a performance rating of 2781. So’s losses came at the hands of Aronian (2812) and Dominguez (2754), respectively.

Van Wely provided the tournament’s biggest surprise when he beat Aronian in the 11th round.

Other 11th-round results saw German GM Arkadij Naiditsch best Rapport and Gelfand beat Harikrishna.

The game between American GM Hiraku Nakamura and Dutch GM Anish Giri and that of Dominguez and Russian GM Sergey Karjakin ended in draws.

So, a Webster University sophomore in Missouri, stayed on track to breaching his goal of Elo 2750 this year.