Young Filipino chess wiz Wesley So captured the 10th Dubai Open Championship in Dubai on Tuesday, beating higher ranked and much older grandmasters from around the world. Currently the youngest grandmaster in the world at 14, So held his ground against Chinese GM Li Chao on Board 1, agreeing to a draw after 18 moves of a Sicilian Defense Accelerated Dragon skirmish in his final game to clinch the crown in the highly competitive event attracting 29 GMs and a total field of 131. So, seeded No. 16 in the tourney with a 2540 Elo rating, finished with seven points with six wins, two draws and just one loss. The chess sensation from Bacoor, Cavite province actually finished tied with Li and two others on top with seven points each at the end of the nine-round Swiss system tourney. So took the Sheikh Rashed Bin Hamdan Al-Maktoum Cup with a better tiebreak score. Georgian GM Merab Gagunashvili also halved the point with Ukrainian GM Valeriy Neverov on Board 2 to take the first runner-up honors. Iranian GM Ehsan Ghaem Maghami whipped Kazakh GM Nurlan Ibrayev to finish third followed by Li. So, Gagunashvili, Maghami and Li evenly split the prizes for the top four totaling $18,000, earning $4,500 each. Indian GM Abhijeet Gupta, Ukrainian GM Yuri Drozdovskij, Indian IM RR Laxman, Neverov, Georgian GM David Arutinian and Azerbaijan GM Rasul Ibrahimov closed out the Magic 10 although they finished with 6.5 points each together with two other Azerbaijan GMs. “I'm happy because I was able to bring honor to our country,” So told a Philippine television crew from ABS-CBN Network following his win. He started the Dubai tourney with five straight wins before losing to Gagunashvili. He then defeated 19th seed GM Abhijit Gupta of India. Following the win, he went for a draw with fourth seed GM Ehsan Ghaem Maghami of Iran (2604). This he did in just 10 moves via an English Opening, thereby resulting in a three-way tie after the last round. The Dubai championship was So's first in an international tournament since he became a GM in December 2007. So completed his final grandmaster norm during an international tournament in Manila in December last year. He is currently the seventh youngest chess player to achieve the grandmaster title in chess history. So could have completed his GM norm at 13 years old but he missed the GM norm by one point in the GMA Cup in 2006 in Manila when he lost to GM Belov of Russia in the last round. He again missed the GM norm by half-point in the Zone 3.3 Zonal Tournament in Vietnam in 2007. __
