Wesley writes again

BY: BOBBY ANG

(As published in Chess Piece, BusinessWorld, on March 15, 2010)

The FIDE Rating List for March 2010 has been released, and the top 10 Filipino players are: 1. GM Wesley So 2665, 2. GM Rogelio Antonio, Jr. 2572, 3. GM Darwin Laylo 2527, 4. IM Rogelio Barcenilla 2518, 5. GM John Paul Gomez 2507, 6. GM Eugenio Torre 2506, 7. GM Mark Paragua 2497, 8. GM Joseph Sanchez 2493, 9. IM Roland Salvador 2483, 10. IM Richard Bitoon 2476.

Wesley So at 2665 is now ranked as no. 64 in the world, quite a nice number, representative of the 64 squares in the chessboard. I featured one of his self-annotated games (against Ivanchuk in the 2009 World Cup) last Friday. To quote Botvinnik:

"If you are going to make your mark among masters, you have to work far harder and more intensively, or, to put it more exactly, the work is far more complex than that needed to gain the title of Master. To begin with, you find yourself up against experienced, technically well-trained tournament players. And then, if your advance is swift, others play against you far more energetically. And, thirdly, every successive step up the ladder grows more difficult.

"At this stage you have to learn how to analyze and comment on games, for that enables you to criticize your own failures and successes. You have to accustom yourself to practical study at home, you have to devote time to studies, to the history of chess, the development of chess theory, of chess culture."

Here is another one of Wesley’s self-annotated games (Chessbase Magazine), and presented here to you with his permission. Notes have been edited a bit for space considerations.

So, Wesley (2640) – Guseinov, Gadir (2625) [E90]
World Cup Khanty Mansiysk (1.1), 21.11.2009
REQUIRES JAVA

WESLEY SO: I could mention that my opponent was the top scorer for the Azerbaijan team in Olympiad and besides, his rating was 2667 in the previous quarter. Therefore before the tournament I had to prepare accordingly if I wanted to try and reach round 2 of the World Cup.





And Gadir finally resigned. I must say that objectively this game should have been a draw of course, but due to time trouble my opponent badly blundered. He used a lot of time in the opening and this turned out to be the decisive factor in the end. In general, I’m happy with my result on this h3 King’s Indian and I will certainly continue playing this interesting system.