So off to big start in World Cup

MANILA, Philippines - Wesley So outplayed youthful Parham Maghsoodloo of Iran in the endgame in carving out a 43-move victory in an English Opening to jumpstart his bid in the Chess World Cup 2015 in Baku, Azerbaijan Friday night.

Facing an untitled player who made through the Asian Continental Zonal qualifiers, So, born in the Philippines but shifted allegiance to the United States last year, built up a kingside attack he converted into a win.

The end came for the 15-year-old Maghsoodloo, whose 2447 rating pales in comparison with So’s 2761.4, when he was forced to give up his queen for a rook to avoid checkmate on the g7 square.

The win thus put So a draw away from advancing to the second round of this tournament using a format of two rapid games (25 minutes plus 10 seconds increment) per match.

So is hoping to bounce back from a humiliating last-place performance in the 10-player Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, Missouri more than a week back.

So lost 12.9 rating points in the St. Louis event that sent him sliding from No. 9 in the world FIDE rankings to No. 12.

So’s best performance in the event came six years ago in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia where he made it to the round-of-16 by stunning Gadir Guseinov, 4-1, Vassily Ivanchuk, 1.5-.5 and Gata Kamsky, 1.5-.5, one after the other before falling to Vladimir Malakhov, 1-4.

In the next two stagings, So exited as early as the second round with defeats to Russians Sergey Karjakin, 1.5-2.5, four years ago also in Khanty-Mansiysk, and Evgeny Tomashevsky, .5-1.5, two years back in Tromso, Norway.