So moves up to No. 28 in world chess

MANILA, Philippines - Filipino Grandmaster Wesley So continued to move up the ladder as he zoomed two rungs up the FIDE rankings released recently.

From No. 30 in the world in December, the 20-year-old So, who had five tournament victories last year including the Universiade in Kazan, Russia, leapt to No. 28 although his rating remained at 2719.

It did not count his perfect six-of-six performance in the just concluded 2013 Pan American Inter-Collegiate Championship in Lubbock, Texas where So powered Webster U to an impressive title sweep and emerged as the best individual performer of the strongest collegiate tournament in the Americas.

If it had, So’s rating will leapfrog to 2728.7, which is good enough for No. 24 in the world and closer to his 2014 target of eclipsing the 2750 plateau.

“His ranking is now 24th in the world,” said former women’s world champion Susan Polgar of Hungary, who coaches So at Webster U.

So though could either take a hit or improve further as he plunges into a bigger, stronger tournament in the 76th Tata Steel Chess Tournament slated from Jan. 10 to 26 in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands.

There, So will play against 11 other super GMs including eight who are currently in the Top 20 list.

Armenian Grandmaster Levon Aronian should be the player to beat being the top seed and No. 2 in the FIDE rankings and having won the tournament three times including the most recent two years ago.

Second seed American GM Hikaru Nakamura, fourth seed Israeli emigre Boris Gelfand and fifth pick Russian GM Sergey Kariakin are the other former winners of this annual tournament formerly known as Corus and Hoogovens.

Interestingly, So will be the second youngest participant of this tournament at 20 years old behind Dutch GM Anish Giri, who is eight months younger than the former.

“We’ll do my best in that tournament and will take it one game at a time,” said So, whose strength as a player has skyrocketed since training with Polgar and Webster U a couple of years ago.