So downs Hungarian foe, enters third round

MANILA, Philippines – Wesley So went on a sacrificial attack and overran Hungarian Csaba Balogh in 34 moves of an English Opening yesterday to sweep his way to the third round of the Chess World Cup 2015 in Baku, Azerbaijan on Tuesday.

So, who has left the Philippines to give his allegiance to the United States, gave up a pawn to open up the center and later a knight to launch a dangerous kingside attack that forced Balogh to give up the exchange.

Already losing, Balogh, who totes a rating of 2665, mistakenly gave up his rook in time panic and immediately resigned.

It was another impressive victory for So, who outplayed Balogh in a rook-and-pawn endgame to carve out a marathon 67-move win of a Ruy Lopez the day before.

So also disposed of untested Iranian Parham Maghsoodloo with a two-game sweep in a lopsided match in the opener to remain undefeated in four games thus far in this strong biennial event staking two slots to next year's World Candidates Match.

So will face either Vietnamese Le Quang Liem or Russian Nikita Vitiugov, who drew their two matches and are playing a two-game tiebreaker at press time, in the third round.

Interestingly, Le is So's former teammate at Webster University under former women's world champion Susan Polgar and owns a 3.5-2.5 head-to-head with the latter in their six encounters.

Slowly, So has regained the rating points he lost with a forgettable last-place performance in the 10-player Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, Missouri two weeks ago that saw him drop 12.9 rating points and slide from No. 9 to No. 12 in the world FIDE rankings.

To date, So is back at No. 10 with a 2769.5 rating.

So made it to the round-of-16 here six years ago in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia where he shocked the likes of GMs Gadir Guseinov, 4-1, Vassily Ivanchuk, 1.5-.5 and Gata Kamsky, 1.5-.5, before bowing to Vladimir Malakhov, 1-4, in their duel for a quarterfinal berth.