Deep preparation paid off for Grandmaster Wesley So as he crushed erstwhile co-leader Vassily Ivanchuk with black Sunday night and stayed in touch of world champion Magnus Carlsen in the super-tough Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands.
Very familiar with the intricacies of the Ruy Lopez, Closed Variation, So sacrificed his knight for a pawn on his 14th move and went on to topple the Ukrainian GM 12 moves later and regain joint second after eight rounds of the tournament that has an average Elo rating of 2746.
His third win against five draws also shoved So three rungs higher to world No. 6 in the Fide live ratings with a personal-high of 2785.3, displacing Vladimir Kramnik (2783), Levon Aronian (2781.5) and Anish Giri (2781.4), respectively.
Carlsen, living up to his top billing (2860), trounced Georgian Baadur Jobava for his fifth straight win that boosted his total to 6.0 points, just ahead of 5.5 pointers So, French Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2757) and Chinese Ding Liren (2732).
Vachier-Lagrave stunned Giri while Ding bested Croatian Ivan Saric.
According to So he’d seen Nxg2 in a game played by German GM Jan Gustaffson against Azerbaijani GM Namig Guliyev and applied it against Ivanchuk, whom he had beaten twice and drawn four times in the past.
The 21-year-old So was threatening mate or about to gobble up another piece with his connected bishop and queen and two rooks when Ivanchuk raised the white flag.
Ivanchuk, a many-time world title contender at 45, got mired at 5.0 points but stayed in front of 4.5 pointers Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan, adoslaw Wojstaszek of Poland and Italian world No. 2 Fabian Caruana (2820).
Other eighth round results saw Caruana repulse Dutch Loek Van Wely; women’s world titlist Hou Yifan of China draw with defending champion Aronian; and Radjabov beat Wojstaszek.
The Cavite-born So, who now represents the United States, will try to remain the only unscathed player in the single round-robin event when he tangles with Vachier-Lagrave in the ninth round Tuesday.
The tournament took its second break Monday.
So quit his studies at Webster University in Missouri to turn chess pro. He has yet to beat Vachier-Lagrave, the 2009 world junior champion, after four matches. The French whipped him in the 2012 Spice Cup. Roy Luarca