So draws with Italian GM, stays in contention

MANILA, Philippines – Grandmaster Wesley So engaged World No. 2 GM Fabiano Caruana of Italy in a tactical swordplay and ended up with a fighting 31-move draw in a Ruy Lopez duel to stay in the thick of things in the 77th Tata Steel Masters in Wijk an Zee in The Hague, the Netherlands Tuesday night.

Coming off with a draw against current world champion GM Magnus Carlsen of Norway and an earthshaking win over defending titlist GM Levon Aronian of Armenia, So continued his daring, employing an old line with black in the opening named after a former Spanish master.

It unnerved Caruana a bit and had to dig deep to fend off So's counter-attack before the two agreed to split the point, sensing the position is drawish anyway.

"He (So) played an interesting move," said Caruana referring to So's backpedalling ninth move to g8 in an interview with chessbase.com. "I knew about the move but I couldn't remember what I wanted to do, it's quite rare.

"Maybe I was slightly better at some point but I misplayed it," he added.

With the point split, So thus remained unscathed with 2.5 points on a win and three draw and is currently ranked tied for fourth with Polish GM Radoslaw Wojteszek after four rounds.

Former World Challenger GM Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine grabbed the solo lead with 3.5 points following a clinical 30-move demolition of French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in their super-sharp Sicilian duel.

As for Caruana, he went from being the solo leader after the first two rounds, to sharing it with Ivanchuk after three before falling to joint second with Chinese GM Ding Liren, who snared his third straight win with Azeri GM Teimour Radjabov in 40 moves of a King's Indian Defense, with three points apiece.

So's impressive showing kept him rising in world chess' pecking order as his rating has zoomed to a career-best 2778.1, which was still good for No. 9 in the world and just a few points closer to No. 6 Aronian (2788.8), No. 7 Dutch GM Anish Giri (2784.3) and No. 8 Russian GM Vladimir Kramnik (2783).

So, like the rest of the competition in this 12-round Category 20 tournament, took a one-day breather before plunging back into action against reigning women's world champion GM Hou Yifan of China Thursday night (Phl time).

Caruana later admitted he refused an earlier offer of a draw by So that almost cost him the game.

"He surprised me with a draw early on but I wanted to play a few more moves, which turned out to be an incorrect decision. I was worse but I think, more or less, managed to hold it," he said.