Philippine's Wesley So continued to hog the limelight in the World Chess Cup after beating defending champion Gata Kamsky of United
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Kamsky, who won the previous event, lost with white pieces and his survival in the event now depends on whether he can win with black pieces.
Wesley on the other hand has a big advantage like situation, similar to the second round against big gun Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine when he had won the first game with black and did not find it too hard to draw with white.
Ivanchuk, who is in the world elite for a long time now, announced after the match that he would quit playing the game professionally.
"It was not just a match, it was a crucial match. I am sure that from now on I should forget about any serious aims in chess. I don't need anything from chess anymore. I will start new life with new goals. I will become just a chess fan now," Ivanchuk said.
Surely losing to a 16-year-old for an elite member of top level events is not easy to digest but those who know Kamsky are still banking on the former Russian who has steely nerves in tense situations.
"Today I played very well against Gata Kamsky. I was preparing to the game. I caught him at the opening and he spent a lot of time. I just hope that tomorrow I will be also lucky," said Wesley after his triumph.
Half the games in the last 32 stage ended decisively but the results saw the higher seeds prevailing generally apart from Kamsky and Sergey Karjakin who met his nemesis in David Navara of Czech Republic.
Top seed Boris Gelfand of Israel went one up against world's best rated woman Judit Polgar of Hungary after a tense game wherein the former showed his positional acumen to get the full point.
Russian Nikita Vitiugov, who had a few anxious moments before he could beat India's Abhijeet Gupta in the first round seemed set to move to the fourth round after his black-piece victory against compatriot Konstantin Sakaev.
Former world champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine made his mark with a victory over Russian Alexander Motylev while another Russian Dmitry Jakovenko scored over Ukraine's Alexander Areshchenko to go one up in his mini-match.
The other winner of the day were twice world junior champ Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan and reigning world junior champion Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France accounting for the Chinese duo of Wang Hao and Yu Yangyi respectively.
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