So sacs pawn, knight, keeps US chess lead

MANILA, Philippines - Wesley So pulverized Jeffrey Xiong with a sacrificial attack and hacked out a 31-move victory of a Queen’s Gambit to remain at the helm with Varuzhan Akobian after eight rounds of the US Chess Championships in St. Louis, Missouri yesterday.

Playing black, So gave up a pawn and a knight to open up Xiong’s kingside for a brutal attack.

So would have regained the solo lead had defending champion Fabiano Caruana converted a winning position into a full point. Instead, Caruana blundered it away and allowed Akobian to snatch the win.

Akobian thus hung into the joint lead with So with six points apiece going into the final rounds.

Half a point behind with 5.5 points was Alexander Onischuk, who shocked four-time US champion Hikaru Nakamura.

With the draw, So stretched his unbeaten streak to 65 matches, 19 behind the second longest in the sport at 84 owned by former Latvian world champion Mikhail Tal.

Interestingly, Tal also owns the longest streak at 95.

So will be shooting for win No. 66 as he faces off with former multiple US champion Gata Kamsky in today’s 10th round.