So tows Webster U to share of chess lead in Pan Am tiff

MANILA, Philippines - Filipino Grandmaster Wesley So won all his first three games to help Webster U’s Team A to a share of the lead along with four others in the 2013 Pan American Inter-Collegiate Championship in Lubbock, Texas yesterday.

Playing black and employing a rare response to the English Opening, So, 20, had all the response to Levan Bergadze’s coffeehouse tactics and won their match in 26 moves, up by a pair of powerful rooks and a pawn that propelled Webster A to a 3.5-.5 win over University of Maryland at Baltimore.

The other two wins for Webster A were provided by Vietnamese Le Quang Liem and German Georg Meier on the top two boards as it moved into a five-way logjam at the helm with Webster B, University of Texas at Dallas and University of Texas at Brownsville.

Interestingly, the UTD also has another Filipino GM, United States-based Julio Catalino Sadorra, who downed Konstantin Kavutskiy in 41 moves of a super-sharp King’s Indian duel to lift his team to victory.

Webster U, the reigning US NCAA champion, will thus clash with Texas Tech U next, seeking another win that will keep it atop the heap in this three-day tournament using a six-round Swiss System format.

“All the hard work this year of the Webster U team will be tested in the two matches tomorrow. No room for any error because one mistake can cost the title,” said Webster U coach GM Susan Polgar of Hungary, a former women’s world champion.

Sadorra and UTD will clash with Webster U’s second team in the fourth round of this event being considered the strongest of all editions with  an impressive cast of 25 GMs.

So, currently ranked 30th in the world with a 2719 rating, is hoping to use this tournament to warm up for a bigger one – the Tata Steel Chess slated in January next year in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands.

There, So will be joined by Armenian Levon Aronian (2803, second), American Hikaru Nakamura (2786, fourth), Italian Fabiano Caruana (2782, seventh) , Isreali Boris Gelfand (2777, eighth), Russian Sergey Kariakin (2756, 12th), Cuban Leinier Dominguez (2754, 14th), German Arkadi Naiditsch (2737, 18th) and Dutch Anish Giri (2734, 20th).