MANILA, Philippines -- Filipino Grandmaster Wesley So hurdled his fourth and fifth round foes to lift Webster U's Team A on Monday to a pair of victories and into the solo lead going into the sixth and final round of the 2013 Pan American Inter-Collegiate Championship in Lubbock, Texas.
So, 20, used his dangerous pair of bishops to outplay GM Elshan Moradiabadi's galloping knights in a tense endgame battle to eke out a 69-move win that helped seal his team's 3-1 victory over Texas Tech U A in the fourth round.
In the battle of undefeated teams hours later, So, who has won five tournaments this year including the Universiade in Kazan, Russia to zoom to the World No. 30 in the FIDE rankings with a 2719 rating, then waylaid GM Conrad Halt in 34 moves of a Queen's Gambit Accepted showdown to clinch a 2.5-1.5 win over University of Texas at Dallas in the fifth round.
Webster U, which shared the top spot in last year's edition with UT Dallas, Webster B, University of Maryland in Baltimore and Illinois A, thus emerged as the only unbeaten team with five match points and will need just a draw against University of Texas at Brownsville in the final round to clinch the title.
"We do not take pride in beating any one team. Our mission is to win, one match at a time. Students are fully focused," said Wesbter U coach Susan Polgar, a former women's world champion.
The win was also sweet for Webster U as it beat a well-funded UT Dallas team, which made the Final Four a record of 11 consecutive times, that boasts of eight GMs.
Another Filipino GM, United States-based Julio Catalino Sadorra, is part of UT Dallas but did not play the last round.
With the win, So remains one of the only two with a perfect score of five points, the other one being teammate GM Ray Robson, who mans the fourth board, in this annual tournament considered as the strongest after luring an impressive cast of 25 GMs.
So is using this tournament to warm up for a bigger, stronger one – the Tata Steel Chess slated in January next year in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands.
There, So will clash with Armenian Levon Aronian (2803, second), American Hikaru Nakamura (2786, fourth), Italian Fabiano Caruana (2782, seventh) , Isreali Boris Gelfand (2777, eighth), Russian Sergey Kariakin (2756, 12th), Cuban Leinier Dominguez (2754, 14th), German Arkadi Naiditsch (2737, 18th) and Dutch Anish Giri (2734, 20th).