So draws with young GM, drops to 2nd

MANILA, Philippines - Grandmaster Wesley So went for a sacrificial attack that fizzled and settled for a 57-move draw with Dutch Anish Giri in their Slav duel to drop to joint second with three others after four rounds of the Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands Wednesday night.

So, 20, gave up a pawn in the middle game to gain the initiative but Giri, the youngest participant at 19, found a way to parry the Filipino ace’s attack to equalize things up.

Giri, who had beaten So twice, survived the onslaught after a series of exchanges and actually ended up a pawn up although he had to settle for a draw with no clear chances for a breakthrough in an opposite color bishops endgame.

The duo thus hiked their total to 2.5 points for a share of second with fifth seed Sergey Kariakin of Russia, who fended off a dangerous attack by Hungarian Richard Rapport for a 44-move win of a French encounter, and Pentala Harikrishna of India, who split the point with Dutch Loek Van Wely in 29 moves of a Queen’s Pawn Game. 

Top seed and world No. 2 Levon Aronian of Armenia outplayed second pick and world No. 3 Hikaru Nakamura of the US in a knight-and-pawn versus bishop-and-pawn ending in 44 moves of the King’s Indian Defense to grab the solo lead with three points.

So, who beat Rapport in the first round and halved the point with Nakamura and German Arkadij Naiditsch in the next two, will battle Boris Gelfand in Thursday’s fifth round as the 11-round, 16-day tournament, formerly called Corus and then Hoogovens, took another break Friday.