FIDE now lists Wesley So as playing for the US. Anyone happen to know how this happened so soon? The last thing I saw on this was that since the Phillipines would not give permission, So would have to either pay €50000 to transfer without their permission, or sit out of official FIDE events for two years if he wanted to transfer with no fee.
Did the Phillipines change their mind and give permission for an immediate transfer, or did So use his Millionaire Open winnings to pay the fee, or did some benefactor step in with the money?
Neither, after the official transfer papers were submitted, there was a period when the PHI could have officially protested the transfer but they didn’t. As a result Wesley was able to transfer with only the application fee being paid.
Did anyone else notice that under the new FIDE policy on deadbeat federations So would not have been allowed to play for the Philippines in an Olympiade or other FIDE title event?
Wesley So is now on the top players bio page, nice work. I just noticed there are some other top US players that could be added to the bios page as well such as:
Sam Shankland
Daniel Naroditsky
Timur Gareev
Alejandro Ramirez
Sergey Erenburg
Yasser Seirawan
Also, Some of the current bios could use updating.
