SPORTS KEN: Wesley So – Youth role model and sports icon 

When this piece was being written, Filipino-bred GM Wesley So was in the driver’s seat in the on-going US Chess Championships. (He defeated young GM Jeffrey Xiong in the ninth round for his third win against 6 draws with two matches left in the tournament.)

Now an American citizen (though he considers himself a true Filipino by heart and mind) after transferring his membership to the US Chess Federation, Wesley, from just being rated among the world’s top 50 best pawn-pushers, has soared to number two, just slightly behind Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, the current FIDE world champion.

His most glittering individual triumph came at the Tata Steel tournament in Netherlands September last year where he bested some of his strongest rivals and peers who were among the top ten GMs.

Since bringing home that bacon, WS has not lost a game in his last 65 outings, reports our colleague Eli Tumbaga who regularly and religiously monitors chess developments here and around the globe via his FB social media Chess News and Views account.

This is a record of sorts where this winning streak is compared to those who previously held the record – past world titleholders like Mikhail Tal, Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and the legendary Bobby Fischer.

So’s prodigious climb to world prominence does not, however, set aside the shining achievements of the first Filipino grandmaster, Eugene Torre who, also as Asia’s first GM, trail-blazed the difficult path to the world championship cycle by breaking the Russians’ traditional stranglehold, barging into the Candidates Matches in the late 70s.

Make no mistake about it. Wesley and Eugene lived, played and shone in different chess eras.

Eugene, along with his peers, enormously profited from the eventual rise of the late Florencio Campomanes to the FIDE presidency whose executive leadership and endearing fatherly manners programmed the former to earn the elusive GM title.

WS, in a manner of speaking, travelled an already well-paved chess route. Unlike in Torre’s time when Filipino chess players scrounged for available printed chess books and other reading materials, Wesley had only to press buttons in his laptop and voila! – the learning stuff he needed to hone his skills are right there.

But whatever is said and written, So appears to be Torre’s second coming of sorts.

It has been a global practice to identify potential world class athletes while they are in their formative years, train and develop them. WS started very young, as a wide-eyed prep grade schooler, taking active part in many chess competitions for kids, emerging as national winner in the Shell Kiddies tournament.
He had been a very patient young man, listening to wise counsel as well as feeling his own pulse. He cultivated a strong positive confidence in his capability and honed it through diligent practice, study and devotion to his chosen craft.

While WS, 23, is imbued with an undying personal ambition to become what he wants to be, his feet remain glued to the ground. He is foremost a God-fearing man who puts his faith and trust in the Lord. There were prior unkind circumstances that happened beyond his control but these did not deter WS from moving on, from moving forward and zeroing in on his quest.

In another bright development, in the last chess Olympiad, WS helped the US squad cop its first championship, garnering a gold on board three in the process. Among those in the US men’s team were Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura, both world championship contenders.

It might, to a degree, disappoint young chess fans in the Philippines to know that WS’ victories in the global arena cannot be out-rightly claimed by his countrymen. As is now customarily written in chess circles, the flag he waves during tournaments and competitions is the banner that has fifty stars spread out on its matted form, not the one originally sewn with a sun surrounded by eight rays in red, white and blue colors.

At this stage, and with his confidence a-building, WS appears headed to his first US Chess Championship crown after three attempts.

WS, who unabashedly wear the Pinoy barong in chess events, continues to twit in his FB page: “ I am very much, every inch a Filipino by heart. Salamat po!” (Email your feedback to fredlumba@yahoo.com.) GOD BLESS THE PHILIPPINES!