Wesley So was born in the Philippines and earned the Grandmaster title in 2008 at the age of fourteen. He moved to the United States in 2012 to study at Webster University on the famous SPICE chess programme, and formally switched federations from the Philippines to the United States in 2014.
His peak rating of 2822 in 2017 briefly made him the world’s number two. He has been US Chess Champion multiple times (2017, 2020, 2021, 2023) and won the inaugural FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship in 2019, defeating Magnus Carlsen in the final. He has since defended the title twice (2022, 2024), making him the only three-time Fischer Random world champion.
His chess style is sometimes described as the most solid at the elite level — heavy in the Berlin Defense, the Slav, and the Italian, with conversion technique in the endgame that is widely admired. The 2017 form when he won the Sinquefield Cup, Tata Steel, and the US Championship in succession was one of the most dominant individual-event runs of the decade.
Wesley So is also a regular voice in elite-chess media — he writes for chess.com, gives interviews, and is generally regarded as one of the most articulate top-ten grandmasters of the modern era.