Grandmaster Wesley So pounced on a blunder by Armenian stalwart Levon Aronian to notch his first win in the third round late Monday and vault into contention in the Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands.
The Cavite-born So, who now represents the United States Chess Federation, gained a knight for a pawn four moves after Aronian’s dubious 20th Ng8 push and eventually prevailed in 54 moves of their Scotch Game (Schmidt Variation).
After drawing with Polish GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek and world No. 1 GM Magnus Carlsen of Norway in the first two rounds, So climbed to 2.0 points and trailed behind Italian GM Fabiano Caruana and Ukrainian GM Vasily Ivanchuk, both with 2.5.
Sharing the limelight with So was Wojtaszek, who stunned Carlsen and also rose to 2.0 points along with French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Chinese GM Ding Liren.
Carlsen (Elo 2862) got mired at 1.0 point in the 14-player single round-robin tournament.
The victory over defending champion Aronian pushed So’s live rating to 2777.3, enabling him to momentarily displace American Hiraku Nakamura (2776) at world No. 9 and become the United States’ top player.
Caruana was held to a draw by the Netherlands’ GM Anish Giri (2784), while Ivanchuk (2715) trounced GM Loek Van Wely (2667), also of the Netherlands. Roy Luarca