So boosts title bid as Carlsen falters

Fil-Am Wesley So settled for a third straight draw Saturday night, but still boosted his chances following the loss of Norweigian world champion Magnus Carlsen to Hungarian Richard Rapport in the eighth round of the 79th Tata Steel Masters Chess in Wizk aan Zee, the Netherlands.

Handling black, So split the point with Russian Sergey Karjakin in 22 moves of a Reti Opening to rise to 5.5 points, keeping his distance from Ukrainian Pavel Eljanov and Chinese Wei Yi in the all-Grandmaster, 13-round event.

Both Eljanov and Wei tote 5.0 points following draws with Polish Radoslaw Wojtaszek and Indian Pentala Harikrishna, respectively.

The top-seeded Carlsen yielded to Rapport in 33 moves of a Reti, Nimzovich-Larsen Attack and got stuck at 4.5 points in a tie with three others.

Bunched with Carlsen are Armenian Levon Aronian, Indian Baskaran Adhiban and Kajakin.

Aronian downed local hope Anish Giri while Adhiban trounced Russian Dmitri Andrekin.
Giri remained at 4.0 points with Harikrishna.
Dutch Loek Van Wely drew with Russian Ian Nepomniatchtchi in another round eight encounter.

The category 21 (average Elo 2751) round-robin competition takes a break Monday and will resume with the ninth round Tuesday.
The 23-year-old So, whose live rating dip a bit at 2816.3, is pitted against Aronian.

Other crucial matches pit Wei against Adiban and Eljanov against Andreikin. Carlsen, whose world-leading rating tumbled to 2835.6 following the loss, will try to bounce back when he takes on Van Wely. —ROY LUARCA