Wild Wesley stuns champ, grabs share of third place

MANILA, Philippines – Living up to his reputation of playing aggressive chess, Wesley So went on attack mode from start to finish and sent defending champion Levon Aronian on his knees with a shock 53-move victory of a wild and woolly Scotch encounter to jump into a share of third in the 77th Tata Steel Masters in Wijk an Zee, The Netherlands Monday night.

Venturing into complex territory of the opening made popular by former Gary Kasparov when he used it against Anatoly Karpov during one of their world championship match, So actually won it as early as the 19th move when Aronian blundered away a piece after an errant backpedalling knight move on the g8 square.

Aronian, the former World No. 2 who is the third highest rated chesser in this 12-round Category 20 event with a 2797 rating,  stubbornly hung into false hopes of salvaging the game when he used every coffee house tactic possible by trying to exploit So's undeveloped queenside rook and bishop and exposed king.

It was to no avail as the Cavite-born, former Webster University standout found all the answers with a series of simplifying exchanges.

When things cleared up, Aronian resigned after he was left an exchange and two pawns down.

The win sent So, who drew with Polish Radoslaw Wojtaszek and reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway in the first two rounds, into a four-way tie for No. 3 alongside Wojtaszek, French Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Chinese Ding Liren with two points apiece out of the possible three.

The group was now half a point behind co-leaders Fabiano Caruana of Italy, who escaped with a marathon 97-draw of a Queen's Gambit Declined, and Vasily Ivanchuk of Ukraine, who downed Dutch Loek Van Wely in 38 moves of a super-sharp Sicilian encounter.

So is playing Caruana, the World No. 2, in the fourth round as of posting time hoping for another favorable result.

So also moved past American Hiraku Nakamura as the No. 9 in the world and the highest ranked player from the United States, the country's he is now representing to chase his world championship dream, with a live rating of 2777.3.

The win was bittersweet for So as he avenged his embarrassing defeat to Aronian in this exact same event last year when the former wound up crashing to sixth place and the latter being vaulted into an impressive first place finish.

"It's my first win over Aronian, I got revenge from last year's tournament when he beat me," said So in an interview with chessbase.com.

So said the key was forcing Aronian into an uncomfortably complex position.

"The opening and position was very complicated by then before he blundered. He probably miscalculated something, somewhere," said So. "If he played correctly, the position would have been very unclear.

"I would have gone an exchange up but I'm not sure who's better," he added.

So went into his return duel with Aronian, who once hovered as No. 2 in the world and is currently ranked No. 5, oozing with confidence after drawing with Carlsen, who defeated Vishwanathan Anand in their world title match to remain the higest ranked woodpusher with 2862.

He brought that optimism by coming up with perhaps the biggest victory of his life against the seemingly mighty Aronian.

"Even though he is No. 5 in the world and a former No. 2, he's also human," said So of Aronian.

Like Aronian, Carlsen showed his human side and also blundered a piece and lost to Wojtaszek in 53 moves of their Dutch encounter, turning the third round into a day of blunders.