Corus Chess: Wesley So escaped with a victory against Friso Nijboer

A game that should have been ended in a draw...or a loss for Wesley. But solid center pawns structure enable GM So to escape a narrow, hard fought victory against the tough Dutch player GM Friso Nijboer. The game ended after 67th move of the Sicilian (Paulsen) and nearly six and a half hours of torturous playing. You can still catch up the replay of the game with commentary at Chessdom. Meanwhile Peter Doggers of Chessvibes had an interesting observation on Nijboer-So match up: "I was filming the timetrouble in that game and the Dutchman had to make his 39th and 40th move in two seconds, but he managed! If So had played 39…Rxc1+, Nijboer would probably not have managed to execute the response in less than a second, I was thinking." GM So's round 2 assignment is against another veteran campaigner, the "Eugene Torre" of Ukraine, 57 year old and former European Junior Champion, GM Oleg Romanishin who also scored a victory in the first round against IM Ali Bitalzadeh also from the Netherlands.

Other results:

Round 1 - Saturday the 17th

Group A

D. Stellwagen - S. Movsesian ½-½
M. Carlsen - T. Radjabov ½-½
L. Aronian - W. Yue ½-½
V. Ivanchuk - J. Smeets 0-1
S. Karjakin - A. Morozevich 1-0
L. van Wely - L. Dominguez ½-½
G. Kamsky - M. Adams ½-½

Group B

H. Yifan - R. Kasimdzhanov 0-1
K. Sasikiran - E. l'Ami ½-½
D. Reinderman - F. Vallejo Pons 0-1
N. Short - J. Werle ½-½
A. Volokitin - F. Caruana ½-½
H. Mecking - Z. Efimenko 0-1
A. Motylev - D. Navara 0-1

Group C

T. Hillarp Persson - R. Pruijssers ½-½
D. Howell - M. Bosboom 0-1
F. Nijboer - W. So 0-1
O. Romanishin - A. Bitalzadeh 1-0
A. Giri - F. Holzke ½-½
A. Gupta - D. Harika 0-1
E. Iturrizaga - M. Leon Hoyos 1-0

Corus Chess 2009 official website