So draws with Dutch, drops share of lead in Tata Steel Masters

MANILA, Philippines – Grandmaster Wesley So went on a sacrificial attack that fizzled and settled for a 57-move draw with Dutch Anish Giri in their Slav duel and slid from a holding a piece of the lead to sharing second place with three others after four rounds of the Tata Steel Masters in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands Wednesday night.

Refreshed by the one-day break, So, 20, gave up a pawn in the middlegame to gain the initiative and ram through the brittle defense of Giri but the latter, the youngest participant at 19 year old or nine months younger than the former, found a way to extricate himself out of trouble.

Giri, who beat So twice and drew the other two of their only four meetings before this round, survived the onslaught after a series of exchanges and even ended up a pawn up. But he then agreed to a draw, perhaps realizing he will not get headway from their opposite-colored bishops endgame.

So and Giri thus hiked their total to 2.5 points on a win and three draws, which is good for a share of No. 2 with fifth seed Sergey Karjakin of Russia. Karjakin fended off a dangerous attack by Hungarian Richard Rapport for a 44-move win of a French encounter and Pentala Harikrishna of India, who split the point with Dutch Loek Van Wely in 29 moves of a Queen’s Pawn Game.

Top seed and World No. 2 Levon Aronian of Armenia outplayed second pick and World No. 3 Hikaru Nakamura of the US in a knight-and-pawns versus bishop-and-pawns ending in 44 moves of the King’s Indian Defense to grab the solo lead with three points.

So, who beat Rapport in the first round and halved the point with Nakamura and German Arkadij Naiditsch in the next two, will battle Boris Gelfand – born in Belarus but migrated to Israel – in Friday’s fifth round as the 11-round, 16-day tournament, formerly called Corus and then Hoogovens, took another breather.