WAKE up the neighborhood and spread the word: GM Wesley So of the Philippines is now ranked No. 18 in the world.
Buoyed by his respectable showing in the Pan Am Games in Texas and the super-strong 76th Tata Steel chess championship in Wik aan Zee, So vaulted to No. 18 in the world rating of the FIDE (International Chess Federation) for the month of February.
So’s rating now stands at ELO 2738 — up by 19 points from the previous 2719 he had last month and 54 points higher than his ELO 2684 during the same period last year.
The feat is also the highest-ever achieved by a Filipino player in the long history of chess.
“I’m very happy with my chess right now,” So, a sophomore business finance student at the Webster University, told People’s Tonight.
“Right now, my goal is to reach the Top 15, or maybe Top 5, in the world,” added So.
So’s coach-trainer, Susan Polgar, also lauded So’s meteoric rise in the world chess.
“Wesley is now officially ranked #18 in the world. He has also accepted the invitation to category 19-20 Capablanca Memorial,” said Polgar.
The 20-year-old Filipino champion is also fresh from a highly-successful campaign last year highlighted by a historic gold medal in the 27th Summer Universiade in Kazan, Russia last July.
The list of the world’s top 20 players based on the recent FIDE list:
1. Magnus Carlsen (Norway) ELO 2872.
2. Levon Aronian (Armenia) ELO 2826.
3. Vladimir Kramnik (Russia) 2787.
4. Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria) ELO 2785.
5. Faniano Caruana (Italy) ELO 2781.
6. Alexander Grischuk (Russia) ELO 2777.
7. Hikaru Nakamura (USA) ELO 2776.
8. Viswanathan Anand (INdia) ELO 2773.
9. Sergey Karjakin (Russia) ELO 2766.
10. Boris Gelfand (Israel) ELO 2761.
11. Peter Svidler (Russia) ELO 2758.
12. Leimier Dominguez Perez (Cuba) ELO 2757.
13. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan) 2757.
14. Michael Adams, (England) 2754.
15. Anish Giri (NEtherlands) ELO 2746.
16. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France) 2745.
17. Vassily Ivanchuk, (Ukraine) ELO 2739.
18. W. So (Philippines) ELO 2738.
19. Etienne Bacrot (France) ELO 2738.
20. Nikita Vitiugov (Russia) ELO 2737.
Source: http://www.journal.com.ph
Go Wesley.
Put him in a field with Carlsen, Kramnik, Nakamura, Aronian, Caruana… he’ll get destroyed!
Wesley just finished the super strong tata steel higher than Nakamura. He finished tied for 4th place behind Aronian,Karjakin n Giri.So is only 20 yrs old n climbing high to reach that plateau. God bless Wesley!!!!!
i’m not saying he is not good, after all he is a 2700 player. But on this site all day long a hear about him just because he is in school that suports Polgar’s program. I don’t hear about Rapport so much witch is a excelent player(better tahn So in my opinion) and who, by the way Susan, is hungarian!
And in Week am Zee, So finished 6th, he was surpassed by Fabiano and Dominguez on tiebreaks.
In conclusion, So is good but not yet great, there are many incredible grandmasters in the world some younger than him that are not mentioned on this site because they don’t live in U.S. or they are not trained by Polgar!