So draws anew in London chess

Wesley So is using the London Chess Classic as a tuneup for his much-awaited debut in the Candidates Matches, which will serve as the final tournament to determine the challenger to reigning World Champion Magnus Carlsen. He was being slowed down instead. After drawing his first three games, So split the point again against Englishman Michael Adams in 31 moves of a Reti duel to slide half a point behind new leader Fabiano Caruana of the US Tuesday night.

Going all out for a win, the Caviteborn, Minnetonka, Minnesota-based chesser couldn’t find winning lines from his pseudo pawn gambit in the opening and engaged his foe to a series of exchanges to extract the draw.

The result was no different from his games against French Maxime VachierLagrave, Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi and US teammate Hikaru Nakamura.

The draw pushed So, who once peaked to world No. 2 behind Carlsen early this year, from sixth to seventh with a 2786.1 live rating.

To his credit, all but one of the games played in this nine-round tournament wound up in draws.

Only Caruana came out with a victory thus far by downing Russian Sergey Karjakin in 42 moves of a Sicilian Defense to seize the solo lead with 2.5 points, half a point ahead of the So-led chase group with two points apiece.

Armenian Levon Aronian and Indian Vishwanathan Anand, Nakamura and Nepomniachtchi, Carlsen and VachierLagrave all halved the point.

Karjakin, who lost to Carlsen in their World title match two years ago, fell to the bottom with 1.5 points. –