So increases distance from Carlsen, 4 others

Chess grandmaster Wesley So FACEBOOK PHOTO

Wesley So is on the go again.

After being stalled for four rounds, So regained his bearing Wednesday and trounced Poland’s Radoslaw Wojtaszek to gain distance from his pursuers in the 79th Tata Steel Masters Chess in the Netherlands.

The Philippine-born So, now representing the United States, forced Wojastzek to yield in 34 moves of an English, Neo-Catalan and climbed to 7.0 points after 10 rounds of the all-Grandmaster event.

Handling white, So stretched his unbeaten run to 53 games and moved a full point away from Armenian Levon Aronian, Norweigian world champion Magnus Carlsen, Russian Sergey Karjakin, Ukrainian Pavel Eljanov and Chinese Wei Yi.

Aronian and Karjakin downed Hungarian Richard Rapport and Russian Dmitri Andreikin, respectively, to catch up with Carlsen, Eljanov and Wei.

Carlsen drew with Indian Pentala Harikrishna and so did Eljanov with Wei.

His fourth victory against six draws raised So’s live rating to a personal-best 2820.1, seventh highest ever in history and good for world No. 3, as he closed in on No. 2 Fabiano Caruana (2824).

The 14-man single round-robin tournament took its last break Thursday and will resume Friday with So battling Andreikin. —ROY LUARCA