Sports Let's support Wesley So

Wesley So is one of the greatest chess players of this generation, and he's definitely the greatest Philippine chess player even though he represents the U.S. now.  One could argue the title of greatest Philippine chess player still belongs to Eugene Torre, but Wesley So is a sure contender for that honor.  Wesley has been one of the top chess players (usually in the Top 10) for many years now, but he's 30 years old now, and many chess players peak around that age and their level begins to wane especially in their mid 30s.  But in recent decades, more chess players are able to maintain their peak play until their early 40s which means that Wesley, if he can keep himself healthy, focused, motivated, and generally happy and positive, can give us another decade or so of the highest level of chess for the world to appreciate, but he also has a chance to improve upon his game and perhaps contend for the world championship.  Wesley is currently ranked 8th in the world as of the February 2024 FIDE (International Chess Federation) rankings with an ELO rating of 2757.   He has had a higher ranking and ELO rating before.  His highest rank was 2nd in the world and an ELO rating of 2822 which by the way is the 5th highest ELO rating ever achieved in history.  He has beaten all the best players around, although he may not necessarily have a winning record against all of them especially Magnus Carlsen (former 5 time FIDE world champion), but no one does, but Wesley has a chance to improve as mentioned earlier and win more games against all of them.

The difference between the top players in the world is not very much.  In general, Wesley does well against all of them.  Wesley is generally consistent whenever he plays.  But when you play against the best, the difference between winning and losing (or drawing) is very small.  In general, humans are not perfect be it in their abilities or consistency to perform at the highest level during a game or tournament.  When you watch Wesley's games, he does almost everything right, and he often wins, but to qualify for the Candidates Match which is the tournament that determines the challenger for the world championship (which is usually held by the incumbent world champion), requires one to have a significant overall advantage over the rest of the field, and even then, some luck.  It's not easy to qualify for the Candidates Match as there are only 8 spots, and Wesley unfortunately was left out of the 2024 Candidates Match by the thinnest of margins, and it was somewhat controversial that he missed out, but let's not dwell on this issue.  We have to look at the bigger and longer picture of Wesley's career, and that's him playing high level chess (if not higher level of chess) for the next decade or so which will establish him as one of the greatest players of all time and give him a chance to enter the Candidates Match which will give him a chance to challenge for the FIDE world championship.  It should be understood that the FIDE world championship is only one of "world championship" matches out there, but it is by far the most respected due to its long history, and it is the world championship that all players hope to achieve.  But the chess world is changing quickly now.  Wesley won the inaugural Global Championship in 2022 held by Chess.com (perhaps the most renowned online chess website) and won $200k, which is a very high prize money as far as chess prizes go.  He also won the inaugural Fischer Random World Chess championship in 2019.  Wesley has a habit of winning inaugural championships.  He has also won the U.S. Chess Championships 3 times (2017, 2020, and 2021), and other prestigious tournaments such as the Tata Steel Masters in 2017. 

What we want is for Wesley to continue on being as successful as before, and actually even being more successful.  It's not easy because, as mentioned earlier, the field is very competitive, and there is a younger generation of talent out there (under the age of 25) that are challenging Wesley's generation.  Wesley's generation currently dominates chess, and it includes Magnus Carlsen (5 time FIDE World Champion), Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Ding Liren (the current FIDE World Champion), Anish Giri, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Sergey Karjakin, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Santosh Gujrathi Vidit, Teimor Radjabov, and many others born between the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s).  Wesley's generation (the Millennial Generation) is extremely competitive and full of talent, and have already dethroned the previous generations out of the top 10, and occupy perhaps most of the top 100.