So draws Radjabov, stays at joint second

MANILA, Philippines - Grandmastter  Wesley So failed to cash in on his slight positional advantage and settled for a 41-move draw with Azeri GM Teimour Radjabov but remained within striking distance of the leaders after seven rounds of the 77th Tata Steel Masters in Wijk an Zee, The Netherlands Saturday night.

So bucked his rival’s ploy to deviate from his pet King’s Indian Defense to a quiet Queen’s Gambit Declined, seizing the open d-file early by doubling up his rooks. But the Filipino ace, now with the US Chess Federation, failed to translate his edge to a winning attack and agreed to split the point just moments after the first time control.

The draw kept So, who beat Georgian GM Baadur Jobava in the sixth round, half-a-point behind the pacesetting GM Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine and GM Magnus Carlsen of Norway with five points apiece.

Ivanchuk, a former world challenger, battled Dutch GM Anish Giri to a marathon 102-move draw in a Queen’s Gambit Accepted while Carlsen overcame a late blunder to eke out a 54-move triumph over Chinese GM Hou Yifan in a showdown by the reigning men’s and women’s world champions.

With 4.5 points, So shares third spot with French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who scraped out a 32-move win over Croatian GM Ivan Saric of their super-sharp Sicilian showdown, and another Chinese GM Ding Liren, who turned a losing game into a 79-move win over Dutch GM Loek Van Wely of yet another Sicilian battle.

The Cavite-born former Webster University standout was playing Ivanchuk, whom he defeated on his way to a sixth place effort in here last year, at presstime.

So actually missed on a couple of moves to firm up his position, enabling Radjabov to equalize and escape with a standoff.

Other results saw World No. 2 GM Fabiano Caruana of Italy and GM Levon Aronian of Armenia halve the point in 47 moves of a Nimzo-Indian Defense and Jobava finally nail a win over Polish GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek in 37 moves of a Bogo-Indian.

It was a sorry loss for Wojtaszek, who beat the world’s top two chessers in Carlsen and Caruana before losing to the last-placed Jobava.