Filipino GM Wesley So is looking forward to his next big tournament – the 2010 Aeroflot Open chess championship on Feb. 9 to 17 in Moscow, Russia.

Hardly disappointed by his fourth-place finish in the 72nd Corus tournament in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands last week, the 16-year-old So quietly flew back to the country for a brief rest period before preparing for another acid test in his young and storied career.

So is set to leave for the Russian capital via Hong Kong on Sunday.

In an interview with Manila reporters, the young chess Grand Master said the latest tournament he will compete in is a new challenge for him.

He said he is looking forward to the competition which will feature a lot of talented players.

But unlike in Corus where he was the lone Filipino participant in the category-16 tournament, So will be joined in Aeroflot by fellow GM Darwin Laylo.

Both So and Laylo will compete in the centerpiece Category A for players with ELO rating higher than 2549.

Laylo, the reigning Asian Zone 3.3 champion, is fresh from a respectable performance in the recent World Chess Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia late last year.

Pichay expressed confidence that both So and Laylo will again do well in Aeroflot.

Last year, So finished in a heavy tie for 17th to 36th places with five points on three wins, four draws and two losses in the nine-round tournament being organized by the Russian Airlines Aeroflot in cooperation with the Russian Chess Federation and the Committee on Tourism of the Municipality of Moscow.

The Filipino champion, however, bagged the top junior award by finishing ahead of fellow world junior campaigners GM Eltaj Safarli of Azerbaijan, GM Sanan Sjugirov of Russia and IM Ray Robson of the United States.

So finished one and a half points behind eventual champions GMs Etienne Bacrot of France and Alexander Moiseenko of Ukraine.

Bacrot, however, clinched the title on a higher tiebreak score.

So’s joint 17th-place finish last year was also enough to surpass the 21st-place finish of GM John Paul Gomez and the 76th-place finish of IM Julio Catalino Sadorra in 2008.

This year, Bacrot is expected to be back to defend the title.

Aside from Bacrot, the other notable players invited in Division A-1 this year are GMs Arkadij Naiditsch of Germany, Bu Xiangzhi of China, Gabriel Sargisian of Armenia, Alexander Onischuk of the United States, Aleksej Aleksandrov of Belarus, Tigran Petrosian and Arman Pashikian of of Armenia, Murtas Kazgaeyev of Kazkahstan, Rauf Mamedov of Uzbekistan, Ilia Smirin and Maxim Rodshtein of Israel, Vadim Milov of Switzerland, and Evgeny Tomashevsky, Alexander Riazantsev, Dimitry Bocharov, Vadim Zvjaginsev and Pavel Smirnov of Russia.

Past winners of the Aeroflot Open from 2002 onwards, are Gregory Kaidanov (USA), Viktor Bologan (Moldova), Sergei Rublevsky (Russia), Emil Sutovsky (Israel), Baadur Jobava (Georgia), Evgeny Alekseev (Russia), Ian Nepomniachtchi (Russia) and Bacrot.*PNA

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