So holds Nakamura to draw, keeps lead at 76th Tata Steel Masters

MANILA, Philippines – Wesley So fought second seed and World No. 3 Hikaru Nakamura of the United States to a fighting draw of their transposed French duel to remain at the helm along with four others after two rounds of the 76th Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands Sunday night.

A day after trouncing Hungarian Richard Rapport in Saturday's opener, So, 20, followed it up with a draw against Nakamura, who is the third highest ranked chess player in the world with a FIDE rating of 2789. The draw kept So’s stranglehold of the lead along with Nakamura, No. 2 Levon Aronian of Armenia, No. 5 Sergey Karjakin of Russia and Anish Giri of the Netherlands with 1.5 points apiece.

So, who has zoomed to 28th in the world this month from 30th last December, came out with a slight positional edge and a dangerous pair of bishops after a series of minor piece exchanges, but offered the draw on the 26th, which Nakamura accepted.

"Most of the time I think it was unclear, I'm not really sure of what will happen," he said during post- match interview.

So may have agreed to a truce with hopes of getting some rest following a 32-hour flight from the US just a couple of days before.

"I'm still getting over it, I hope things get better as the tournament goes on," said So.

So's will clash with German Arkadij Naiditsch in the third round being played as of posting time.

Naiditsch, who is ranked a rung below So with a 2718 rating, remained scoreless after dropping his second straight match, the last against the Giri, the youngest participant at 19 years old, in 33 moves of their Bogo Indian duel after blowing a pawn advantage no thanks to an overeager king that was trapped at center.

Interestingly, Naiditsch owns a better record over So as the former won once over the latter and drew their only other game.