Wesley downs Israeli, paces Swiss tourney

Standings after three rounds: 2.5 points—W. So (RP); 2.0—E. Tomashevsky (Russia), F. Caruana (Italy); 1.5—M. Vachier-Lagrave (France), A. Giri (Netherlands),  D. Andreikin (Rusia) N.N. Truong Son (Vietnam), M. Rodshtein (Israel); 1.0—D. Howell (England); 0—P. Negi (India)

BIEL, SWITZERLAND—Filipino sensation Wesley So trounced  Israeli hope Maxim Rodshtein in 39 moves of a Gruenfeld Defense Wednesday to grab the solo lead after the third round of the 2010 Biel Young Grandmasters chess championship.

The 16-year-old So, ranked 60th in the world with an Elo of 2674, pounced on a blunder by Rodshtein on the 38th move to force the former world under-16 champion to resign due to inevitable mate in two moves.

So, who raised his total to 2.5 points, sealed his second win with the black pieces with a bishop for a pawn sacrifice on the 38th move, following Rodshtein’s fatal Qh4 move instead of Qf4.

The 21-year-old Rodshtein was a key factor in Israel’s amazing second place finish in the 2008 Chess Olympiad in Dresden, Germany, by scoring 7.0 points in nine matches.

Trailing So, seeded fourth in the nine-player, all-GM field, with 2.0 points are Russian Evgeny Tomashevsky and Italian Fabiano Caruana.

Tomashevsky, seeded second behind Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France with an Elo of  2708,  drew with compatriot Dmitry Anddreikin, while third seeded Caruana bested cellar-dwelling Indian Parimarjan Negi.
Vachier-Lagrave, Anish Giri of the Netherlands and three others share fourth to eighth places with 1.5 points.
On  Monday, So beat eighth seed David Howell of Britain in the first round and drew with Vachier-Lagrave with  white the following  day.

In Thursday’s fourth round, So will again handle white against Negi, loser of all his three matches so far.

Negi, seeded ninth with an Elo of 2615, holds a one win-one draw record against So.

The Russian-born Rodshtein, who trained under GMs Boris Gelfand and  Levon Aronian, opened with queen pawn and steered it to  the Exchange variation of the Gruenfeld.

Well-versed with the opening popularized by former world champion Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik, the two players blitzed through their opening  moves until the 21st when Rodshtein spent a lot of time on his continuation and fell behind in the clock.

In their only other meeting, So and Rodshtein split the point in the 2007 World Junior Championship in Yerevan, Armenia.