After seven rounds in the Corus B tournament in Holland, Filipino chess prodigy Wesley So trailed frontrunner Anish Giri by a point. In his eighth round match with China?s Ni Hua, GM So played the black pieces and used the Sicilian defense.
The 26 year old Ni Hua employed the Rossolimo variation and the game proceeded into well analyzed theoretical lines. The game ended in a draw after 17 moves.
Prior to this game, they were both tied at second with 4.5 points. They have played twice before, in 2006 in Manila which ended in a draw and during the 2008 Dresden Olympiad wherein So scored a win in 42 moves of a Ruy Lopez.
In an interview last year at the website chessdom.com, So described his win against the Chinese GM as his most memorable as this was his first against a player with a 2700 ELO rating. But the 16 year old GM would have more memorable performances in the 2009 Chess World Cup when he beat Vasily Ivanchuk and Gata Kamsky.
So?s first five games were draws against Arkadij Naiditsch of Germany, Erwin L’Ami of Holland, Varuzhan Akobian of the U.S. and Indian GM’s Parimarjan Negi and Pentala Harikrishna. He then won two straight games against Romania’s Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu and Dimitri Reinderman of Holland.
