So settles for draw, zero in on tournament leader

MANILA, Philippines -- Grandmaster Wesley So failed to cash in on his slight positional advantage and settled for a 41-move draw with Azeri GM Teimour Radjabov but remained within striking distance of the leaders after seven rounds of the 77th Tata Steel Masters ion Wijk an Zee, The Netherlands Saturday night.

Unperturbed by Radjabov's decision to deviate from his pet King's Indian Defense to a quiet Queen's Gambit Declined, So seized the open d-file early by doubling up his rooks but he couldn't get something from it and agreed to split the point just moments after the first time control.

The half point pushed So, who is coming off a clinical win over Georgian GM Baadur Jobava the round before, to just half a point behind the pace-setting GM Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine and GM Magnus Carlsen of Norway with five points apiece.

Ivanchuk, a former World Challenger, battled Dutch GM Anish Giri to a marathon 102-move draw in a Queen's Gambit Accepted while Carlsen overcame a late blunder to eke out a 54-move triumph over Chinese GM Hou Yifan in a showdown by the reigning men's and women's world champion.

So, for his part, has 4.5 points to share third with French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who scraped out a 32-move win over Croatian GM Ivan Saric of their super-sharp Sicilian showdown, and another Chinese GM Ding Liren, who turned a losing game into a 79-move win over Dutch GM Loek Van Wely of yet another Sicilian battle.

The Cavite-born former Webster University standout will have a chance to wrest the lead or at least grab a share of it as was playing Ivanchuk, whom the former defeated on his way to a sixth place effort in this same tournament considered as the Wimbledon of chess last year, at presstime.

So actually had a good chance of increasing the pressure on Radjabov but blew it up with a couple of passive moves.

When the smoke of endgame battle dissipated, Radjabov managed to equalize to escape with a standoff.
Other results saw World No. 2 GM Fabiano Caruana of Italy and GM Levon Aronian of Armenia halving the point in 47 moves of a Nimzo-Indian Defense and the daring Jobava finally nailing his first win by bringing down Polish GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek in 37 moves of a Bogo-Indian.

It was a sorry loss for Wojtaszek, who beat the world's top two chessers in Carlsen and Caruana before losing to the last-placed Jobava.