IT TOOK Wesley So less than a week to prove that he’s back in top form.
Shrugging off a final-round collapse in the Altibox Norway Chess tournament, So wreaked havoc in the Your Next Move Leuven Rapid & Blitz competition in Belgium.
Propelled by back-to-back wins over world No. 2 Fabiano Caruana, who beat him in Norway, and No.3 Shakriyar Mamedyarov, So was never challenged and finished with a runaway total of 7 points in nine rounds of rapid play (25 minutes with a 10-second delay).
The Cavite-born So, now playing for the United States Chess Federation, also claimed wins over Anish Giri in the fourth round, Alexander Grischuk in the fifth and Hiraku Nakamura in the seventh.
So split the point with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France in the third round, Levon Aronian of Armenia in the sixth, Sergey Karjakin of Russia in the eighth, and former world champion Viswanathan Anand of India.
So, 24, who settled for joint fourth in Norway rather than a share of first place, wound up 1.5 points clear of Aronian and Vachier-Lagrave.
Also slated are 18 rounds of blitz play (three minutes plus two seconds).
Among the world’s elite players, only Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen, who was stunned by So at Altibox, and No. 4 Ding Liren of China were missing from the tournament serving as the first stop of the 2018 Grand Chess Tour.
The Grand Chess Tour, a tournament hosted by several countries, gathers the world’s top players. Carlsen emerged the overall champion in the 2015 and 2017 editions while So topped the GCT in 2016.
Next up for So is the Paris GCT set June 20 to 24. (Roy Luarca for ABS-CBN News)
