By Kristel Satumbaga
Wesley So lost to Iranian teenager Alireza Forouzja in the ninth and final round to finish fifth out of 10 participants in the 2020 Champions Showdown: Chess9LX (Fischer Random) online tournament over the weekend.
It was a painful defeat for So, who now plays for the United States, as he had a chance to finish tied for first with Hikaru Nakamura and world champion Magnus Carlsen had he defeated the 17-year-old Firouzja.
But it was not to be for So, who drew his seventh and eighth-round games against Nakamura and former world champion Gary Kasparov of Russia, as Farouzja played the spoiler’s role to the hilt to carve out the giant-sized upset.
Nakamura took the title while Carlsen, whose lone defeat came at the hands of So in the fifth round, wound up second with six points apiece, half a point ahead of Armenia’s Levon Aronian and World No. 2 Fabiano Caruana of the United States with 5.5 points apiece.
So ended up at solo fifth with five.
For Firouzja, he wound up 10th and dead last with 2.5 points but his win over So, the current world titlist in Fischer-Random, should be enough to salvage some measure of pride.
