So salvages draw, stays in joint lead

MANILA, Philippines - Grandmaster Wesley So escaped with a 54-move draw against Chinese reigning women’s world champion Hou Yifan in their Ruy Lopez game to stay in a three-way tie for the lead after two rounds of Tata Steel Masters Chess 2016 in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands Sunday night.

So, who defeated Dutch GM Anish Giri in Saturday’s opener of the elite tournament, lost his way in the middle game, enabling Hou to go one pawn-up and gain a slight positional advantage. But he recovered and found a way to force a draw after the two ended up with a pair of bishops in a closed position.

The standoff kept So at the helm with GM Fabiano Caruana of the US, who battled men’s world champion GM Magnus Carlsen of Norway to a 32-move standoff of a King’s Indian Attack, and Ding Liren of China, who also split the point in 33 moves of Slav Defense, with 1.5 points apiece.

So faces Russian Sergey Karjakin in the third round being played at presstime.

Carlsen stayed behind with back-to-back draws to drop into a tie with Hou, Karjakin, and GMs Sergey Karjakin of Azerbaijan, Evgeny Tomashevof Russia, Loek Van Wely of the Netherlands, David Navara of the Czech Republic and Wei Yi of China.

Giri, English GM Michael Adams and Ukrainian GM Pavel Eljanov trail the group with half-a-point each.