So opens Sigeman chess championship campaign with draw

MALMO, SWEDEN—GM Wesley So of the Philippines settled for a draw against perennial rival GM Anish Giri of the Netherlands at the start of the 19th annual Sigeman chess championship at the Hipp Theater here Thursday.

So, 17, kept the younger but higher-rated Giri in check for most part of the duel between two chess prodigies and agreed to a truce after 45 moves of the Slav defense.

The third-seeded Filipino, who played white, took a slight initiative with better pawn structure in the middle game but failed to convert in the face of 16-year-oldGiri’s exceptional defense in the five-round event.

“It was a clear draw, which was the only logical result for this kind of game. Wesley had a small advantage with better structure but a strong player like Giri can easily hold for a draw,” commented GM Henrik Danielsen, who analyzed the game for the official Sigeman website.

Top seed GM Alexi Shirov of Spain crushed GM Jonny Hector of Sweden and GM Hans Tikkanen subdued GM Nils Grandelius in an all-Swedish encounter to take the headstart in the six-player, round-robin competition.