Wesley So. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Wesley So bowed to fellow Super Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura in their tiebreaker early Monday and blew his title-retention bid in the 2016 Millionaire Chess Open in Las Vegas.
So wound up fifth while Nakamura, also a member of the United States team like the Philippine-born So, advanced to the final four with Vietnamese GM Le Quang Liem, Russian-born Aleksandr Lenderman of the US and Chinese GM Yu Yangyi.
Yu will face Lenderman while Le will tackle Nakamura in the knockout semifinals of the $1 million event won by So last year.
Le, Yu and Lenderman finished the seven-round elimination round with 6.0 points each. So, who lost to GM Vasif Durarbayli of Azerbaijan in the fourth round, notched 5.5 in a tie with Naka-mura and several others.