So draws Viet, stays in hunt

Standings after seven rounds:

4.5 points—F. Caruana (Italy); 4.0—M. Vachier-Lagrave (France), W. So (RP), E. Tomashevsky (Russia), D. Andreikin (Russia), M. Rodshtein (Israel); 3.5—N.N. Truong Son (Vietnam); 3.0—A. Giri (Netherlands); 2.0—D. Howel (England), P. Negi (India)

BIEL, SWITZERLAND—Filipino sensation Wesley So remained in contention despite settling for a draw with Vietnamese hope Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son in the uneventful seventh round of the 2010 Biel Young Grandmasters chess championship at the Congress Centre Monday night.

The 16-year-old So, who played white, and Nguyen split the point after only 26 moves of the Gruenfeld and less than four hours of play.

The four other matches in the 10-player, all-GM tournament—Fabiano Caruana (Italy) against Anish Giri (Netherlands), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France) against Evgeny Tomashevsky (Russia), Parimarjan Negi (India) against Dmitry Andreikin (Russia) and Maxim Rodshtein (Israel) against David Howell (England)—also ended in draws, leaving the overall standings unchanged.

So stayed tied for second to sixth places with 4.0 points, half a point behind Caruana going into the final two rounds of this category-17 tournament featuring some of the world’s top young GMs.