MANILA, Philippines – Wesley So displayed superb endgame technique as he took down Hungarian Csaba Balogh in 67 moves of a Ruy Lopez game in the first of their two-game second round match of the Chess World Cup 2015 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Playing back, So, who has given up his Philippine allegiance to represent the US, sacrificed a piece for a pawn and then regained it a move later to open up the center and the kingside that he used to spring up an attack by marching his king straight on Balogh's isolated central d-pawn.
So though used it a decoy with a real intention of attacking another weak pawn in the a-file for the decisive attack.
When Balogh, whose rating of 2665 is a little bit higher than the 2447 of untested Iranian Parham Maghsoodloo in their one-sided first round match that resulted into a two-game sweep, resigned, So was about to promote his queenside passed pawn.
So, playing white, will need to just draw his last game versus Balogh to seal a spot in the third round.
So is eyeing to rebound from an embarrassing last-place effort in the 10-player Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, Missouri two weeks 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.
But his three straight wins in Baku pushed So back in the top 10 with a live rating of 2766.1.
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.