So grabs Tata Steel Masters solo lead

Wesley So. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Filipino-American Grandmaster Wesley So continued his assault Thursday night, whipping Indian Grandmaster Pentala Harikrishna in the fifth round and grabbing the solo lead in the Tata Steel Chess Masters tournament in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Playing aggressively with white, So prevailed in 48 moves of a King’s Fianchetto to raise his total to 4.0 points and pad his live Elo rating to 2819.4, the seventh highest ever in history.

His third straight win enabled the Philippine-born So, now ranked No. 3 in the world, to zoom ahead of Norweigian world champion Magnus Carlsen, who was held to a draw by Russian GM Ian Nepomniachtchi, and erstwhile leader Pavel Eljanov, who got derailed by Armenian GM Levon Aronian.
Carlsen, a five-time winner of the event, and Eljanov have 3.5 points each.

Asia’s first GM Eugene Torre said he followed the So-Harikrishna encounter in the internet but slept when he saw that So was on the verge of winning.

“With the way he’s been playing, I won’t be surprised if Wesley wins the tournament and hopefully emerge as a (world) title contender,” said Torre, who took the board 3 bronze medal in last year’s Baku Chess Olympiad with nine wins and two draws. So wound up gold medalist.
The sixth round will be held Friday with So tackling Indian Baskaran Adhiban.

Other games saw Poland’s Radoslaw Wojtaszek beat the Netherlands’ Loek Van Wely and Hungary’s Richard Rapport draw with Russia’s Dmitri Andreikin. —ROY LUARCA