Grandmaster Wesley So succumbed to teenager Alireza Firouzja of Iran 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, was 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 No. 5 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.