Wesley So opens bid in Candidates Tournament 2018

MANILA, Philippines – On Saturday, March 10, at 10 pm in Manila, and until March 27, a lot of young and middle aged men will be glued to their computer screens or mobile phones. Their chargers will be nearby while their wives or girl friends will be unnoticed for hours. 

For this is the Candidates Tournament, the last stage to select the challenger to world chess champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway. Eight players play a double-round tournament and one of them is Wesley So, whom Filipino chess fans continue to idolize even if the Stars and Stripes are on his table.

No Filipino has qualified for the Candidates Tournament. When it was still match play format, Eugene Torre made it in 1982 and was eliminated by Hungarian Zoltan Ribli in the quarterfinals.

What are the chances of So? Pretty tough. For 17 days he will be playing these men twice: Armenian Levon Aronian, winner of the World Cup; former world champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia; Sergey Karjakin, also of Russia, who lost the world title match two years ago to Carlsen; Azarbaijian’s Shakriyar Mamedyarov, the top seed and world No.2; unpredictable Russian Alexander Grischuk and Ding Liren of China, who eliminated So in the semifinals of the World Cup.

You can find the Candidates tournament schedule here.

So qualified for the Candidates Tournament by having the best average for a great part of the year. 

He trails Aronian, Ding Liren and Mamedyarov in head-to-head scores. He is ahead of Kramnik and Grischuk,. His score against Fabio Caruana, who like him plays under the American flag,  is even.

The pairings were done early February which meant the players have had one month to complete their final preparation. In Ding Liren, the first Chinese to qualify for the Candidates, China has poured out their resources to aspire for the only world chess title that has eluded them.

Philippine chess has fallen on hard times since So chose to play for the US in 2014. There are some signs of revival as the National Chess Federation of the Philippines will be watching wonder kid Daniel Quizon and Michael Concio at the HD Bank Cup in Vietnam, which also starts tomorrow. 

Thus So is still embraced by Filipino fans like one clings to a true love on distant shore. For when will the Philippines have someone ranked 4th in the world?

Fame has not made So put on some airs. On his FB page or the Chessgames.com page, he thanks his supporters and apologizes for a bad showing. He is a serene 23-year-old young man.

His chess is like him. He sees good moves quickly, whether in good or bad positions, He defends stoutly and as he showed this at Tata Steel as he scored 2.5 points from 3 inferior positions.

Maxime Vachier Lagrave, the Frenchman who has a big plus score against So, describes him well in his blog. 

“He is a typical counterattacking player, that’s where he feels at ease. If he doesn’t succeed in finding more aggressive ideas in the opening, in setting more problems to his opponents, it will not work in Berlin. Of course, he gets positions he could possibly win, but it might not be sufficient at the Candidates tournament level, where everybody arrives armed to the teeth,” said Vachier Lagrave.

Not only is the Candidates Tournament a test of preparation but also of nerves and knowing when to strike. These long events don’t often go to the crowd favorite but to the patient, persevering and calm player. Did not Tigran Petrosian, whose boring play lulled opponents to underestimate him, to win the 1962 Curacao Candidates Tournament, an event where Bobby Fischer was the favorite?

When one enters a chess tournament, one sees men walking on stage, sometimes looking ahead or even at the ceiling. They sometimes wander to the other tables glancing at the position and the players. Every bit of information that will help gain an edge, disguise a weakness or even hide his preparation is stored in a player’s brain in this wordless scene.

In the evening, after dinner and a long walk, the player and his coach discuss the next round’s game. It is common to hear this dialogue between coach and player: “I notice he has no system for this opening.” “I agree, but I saw how he behaved against this other system. He was nervous and lucky to draw.” “We shouldn’t tempt fate. Maybe he will recover.” “No, I don’t think so.”

And this goes on. Even during breakfast, early lunch, observations are made. A decision is made a few hours before a game but there have been tales of players changing their minds on the spot as one feels his foe seated too calmly. 

This psychological battle is only part of the lure of chess. This absorbs and consumes Filipino chess fans who hope against hope Wesley So will challenge Magnus Carlsen for the title. They are witnessing chess history unfold before their laptops and for 17 days, it can be either be  heaven or hell.  – Rappler.com