Wesley crushes Giri, improves live rating

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine-born Wesley So continued his stellar play and bested Anish Giri of the Netherlands to stay in the Norway Chess tournament title hunt while climbing to world No. 5 in the live ratings.

The world Fischer-Random king fought Giri to a 31-move draw of a Nimzo-Indian to hike his rating to 2781 behind world champion Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren of China, Alizera Firouzja of France and Fabiano Caruana of the United States.

The two-time US champion has been on a tear as of late, beating Azeri Teimour Radjabov and Carlsen himself in the first two rounds of the Stavanger tilt.

In the most recent one, So needed an Armageddon tiebreaker to split the point with Giri in 44 moves of a Ruy Lopez, just enough to extract 1.5 points that hiked his total to six points.

It was good for solo second place behind Vishwanathan Anand of India, who bested China’s Wang Hao in their playoff game, with 7.5 points.

So is hoping to rack up some more points with hopes of reclaiming his place at world No. 2, which he reached a few years ago.