So bows to German GM, drops to 2nd

MANILA, Philippines - GM Wesley So took a stinging loss from GM Georg Meier of Germany and dropped to second after four rounds of the 2010 SPICE (Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence) at the Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas Monday.

So surprisingly struggled with the white pieces as he tried to attack Meier’s French defense, giving up his queen for two rooks in a futile effort to ease black’s control of center before dropping his first game after 61 moves.

The 17-year-old Filipino champion, who vaulted into the solo lead with back-to-back victories over American GMs Eugene Perelshteyn and Ray Robson in the second and third rounds, tried to shake off Meier with that queen sacrifice on the 21st move and labored for almost four hours in search for a draw before resigning.

Meier, 23, had a queen and three connected pawns on the fourth and fifth ranks against So’s two rooks and one pawn.

Meier, who became a GM in 2007, thus wrested the solo lead with eight points, relegating So to second with seven points.

 under the scoring system which gives three points for a win, one point for a draw and zero for a loss.

The Filipino champion, gearing up for this month’s Asian Games in Guangzhou, tries to recover lost grounds as he takes on top seed GM Zoltan Almasi of Hungary in the fifth round.