So, French GM settle for draw, stay joint 2nd

MANILA, Philippines - Grandmaster Wesley So fought his way back from an inferior position to salvage a 43-move draw with French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave as they remained tied at second after nine rounds of the 77th Tata Steel Masters in Wijk an Zee, The Netherlands Tuesday night.

So looked headed for a big finish after gaining a pawn up in the early going of their Gruenfeld encounter but the 21-year-old Filipino made a couple of passive moves, enabling Vachier-Lagrave to equalize and even seize a slight positional advantage at endgame.

But So initiated a pawn swap and managed to do away with his knight against his rival’s dangerous bishop to force the standoff in a rook-and-pawn endgame.

So and Vachier-Lagrave thus hiked their totals to six points apiece but the duo fell one point behind GM Magnus Carlsen of Norway, who smashed Azeri GM Teimour Radjabov in 40 moves of a Ruy Lopez duel, to notch his sixth straight win for seven points overall.

So was playing GM Ding Liren in the 10th round at presstime, hoping to score a repeat of his win over the Chinese ace during their first round encounter in the 2011 World Chess Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia.

The draw stretched So’s unbeaten streak to 52 games since he lost to GM Fidel Corrales Jimenez in the third round of the Saint Louis Open in April last year.

But the draw dropped So to No. 8 in the world ranking after zooming to a career-best No. 6 following Monday’s spectacular win over former World Challenger GM Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine. He now has a live rating of 2785.2 after Dutch Anish Giri (2785.7) and Armenian GM Levon Aronian (2785.5) reclaimed their old posts with wins.

Giri dismantled Ding’s King’s Indian Defense in 75 moves while Aronian sacrificed a pawn to storm Georgian GM Baadur Jobava’s kingside and hammer out a spectacular 24-move win in their Benoni duel.