WESLEY So’s unbeaten run finally ended early Sunday as he yielded to Anish Giri and virtually dropped out of title contention in the all-Grandmaster Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands.
Unable to stop Giri’s isolated a-pawn from queening, So resigned after 111 moves and over seven hours of their English Opening transposed into a Benoni Reversed setup encounter. The win pushed the Dutchman closer to pacesetting world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway.
Carlsen was held to a third straight draw, this time by Chinese ace Ding Liren, and settled with 8.5 points, just ahead of Giri’s 8.0 heading into Sunday’s 13th and final round.
It was So’s first loss in 55 games since last year and it occured in the 12th and penultimate round of the round-robin tournament that boasts an average Elo rating of 2746.
So, the Philippines’ former top player who now represents the United States, got mired at 7.5 points in the company of Ding and Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who drew with Armenian Levon Aronian, the 2014 winner who now languishes in ninth spot (5.0).
Other matches pitting Dutchman Loek Van Wely and Georgian Baadur Jobava, Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk and Italian Fabiano Caruana, and women’s world champion Hou Yifan of China and Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan also ended in draws.
For So to resurrect his shot at the crown, he needs to beat Van Wely in the final round on Sunday night and hopes that both Carlsen and Giri drop theirs against Croatian Ivan Saric and Pole Radoslaw Wojtaszek, respectively.
These seem unlikely, however, as Carlsen (Elo 2860) is ranged against the lowly Saric (2666) while Wojtaszek is off-form, bowing to Saric in the 12th round.
Also seeking wins are Vachier-Lagrave versus Caruana (2820) and Ding against Aronian.
In asserting his supremacy over So whom he has beaten three times and drawn as many times in six matches, Giri vaulted to fifth in the world rankings with a live rating of 2797.2, dislodging former world champion Viswanathan Anand of India (2797).
Though So’s rating dropped to 2783.8, he remained seventh in the world live rankings, ahead of Russian Vladimir Kramnik (2783), Aronian (2782) and erstwhile leading American Hiraku Nakamura (2776). Roy Luarca