So settles for draw, keeps lead

WIJK AAN ZEE, The Netherlands – GM Wesley So exerted extra effort to find the winning combination but had to settle for a fighting draw with GM Friso Nijboer of The Netherlands in the pivotal 11th round of the 73rd Tata Steel-Corus Group B chess championship at the De Morianne Community Center here Friday.

So failed to turn an early positional and material advantage into a successful conclusion, finally obliging to split the point with the lower-rated but hard-fighting Nijboer in marathon 80 moves of the King’s Indian Samish variation.

Although he had a clear advantage in theoretical rook and knight versus rook ending, the 17-year-old Filipino champion failed to shake off the Dutch player and eventually settled for his second straight draw in the prestigious 14-player, category-17 tournament.

Before reaching the standoff, So tried to complicate matters by forcing an exchange of the major pieces.

 while breaking down Nijboer’s kingside defenses with his more active queen.

But the 45-year-old Nijboer, who became a GM in 1996, found the right continuation and parried So’s kingside attack with a queen exchange on the 47th move. 

Overall, So dropped into a four-way tie for the lead with GMs Like McShane of England, David Navara of Czech Republic and Zahar Efimenko of Ukraine with 6.5 points still two rounds left.

McShane overpowered GM Surya Ganguly of India, Navara crushed GM Vlad Tkachiev of France and Efimenko halved the point with top seed GM Radek Wojtaszek of Poland.

So, who topped Group C in his initial appearance here in 2009 and finished in a tie for fourth to fifth places in Group B last year, will now take on McShane in a crucial 12th round showdown that could detemrine the rigfhtful winner of this 13-round competition.

Efiemnko will play GM Le Quang Liem of Vietnam while Navara will meet Nijboer in other decisive penultmate round matches.

Le vaulted into contention by winning his last three matches, including his 11 th round encounter against GM Jon Ludvig Hammer of Norway.

National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP) president/chairman Prospero “Butch” Pichay lauded So for “trying his best to squeeze out a win against Nijboer” and urged him to do the same against McvShane in Saturday’s 12 th round.

The Barangay Wesley also gave the thumbs-up sign to the Filipino player for doing his best in looking for a win in a book draw endgame.

But one blogger, maelith, said So should have played a few more moves to provoke a mistake by Nijboer just like what former world champion Garry Kasparov did in winning a marathon 90-move game against Judit Polgar in Spain in 1996 with a similar rook and knight versus rook ending.