GM Wesley So
Tata Steel 2016 is one of the strongest tournaments in 2016. The Masters bracket of the tournament features 14 of the most renowned chess players today. Each day before the tournament, Chessdom brings you a pre-tournament summary for one of the 14 participating Grandmasters.
Magnus Carlsen / Fabiano Caruana / Anish Giri / Liren Ding / Wesley So / Sergey Karjakin / Pavel Eljanov / Shakhryar Mamedyarov / Evgeny Tomashevsky / Michael Adams / David Navara / Yi Wei / Yifan Hou / Loek van Wely
Wesley So placed second in Tata Steel 2015, can he improve his performance in the 2016 edition and snatch the title this time? 2015 was a relatively good year for Wesley So, with a slight increase in his ELO. He has maintained his spot in the top 10 and a solid performance at the Tata Steel 2016 will only serve to reconfirm that. The high point of So’s 2015 is the win in the 8th Bilbao Masters, where he faced trials, tribulations and playoffs with Anish Giri, finishing 3 points ahead of competition.
In the strong Dortmund Sparkassen Meeting 2015, he finished second only behind Fabiano Caruana. Wesley So and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu tied for the second place with 4 points each. Despite Nisipeanu defeating So in their direct encounter, the Philippine talent, who is currently the second strongest U.S. player, took the silver because of the first tie-break criteria – higher number of games played with Black pieces.
In the Corus/Tata Steel chess series, Wesley So has competed only twice, but he finished very strong in both events – in 2014, he was third, while in 2015 he came second right after Carlsen. If his progression from the past years maintains, he is a favorite for Tata Steel 2016.
Follow the Tata Steel 2016 live daily on Chessdom.com with triple engine analysis by Komodo, Stockfish, and Houdini and via GM commentary in pgn and pdf by GM Kuljasevic, GM Grigorov, IM Videnova, and GM Arnaudov through Chess Insider (January) and Modern Chess (January) magazines.
