Wesley finishes 3rd in World Open chess

MANILA, Philippines - Grandmaster Wesley So drew with fellow GM Yuri Shulman in the final round and settled for third overall in the 40th Annual World Open Chess Championship in Philadelphia recently.

So tallied 6.5 points on four win and five draws in the nine-round event, nipping GMs Giorgi Kacheishvili of Georgia, Aleksander Lenderman, Alexander Evdokimov, Ray Robson, Mark, Arnold Yuri and Shulman in the tiebreak to clinch third place honors.

GM Ivan Sokolov of the Netherlands defeated GM Alexander Shabalov of the US to cop the crown with seven points.

So opened his campaign with a draw against FM Michael Bodek then beat Benjamin W Krause of the US before halving the point with GM Tsegmed Batchuluun of Mongolia and GM Vladimir Romanenko of Belarus in the next two rounds.

But he racked up three straight victories to get into contention, beating GM Alonso Zapata of Colombia, GM Deepan Chakkravarthy of India and GM Atanas Ivan Kolev of Belarus only to get slow down by two draws against Shabalov and Shulman.