Quang Liem defeated Chinese player, kept the top spot in World Open 2017
Vietnam's number one chess player maintained his high performance at the prestigious US chess tournament, with 4.5 points after five games.
After three easy wins against much lower-rated opponents like Robby Adamson (2,212 elo), Pavel Blatny (2,394) and Andrew Tang (2,461), Le Quang Liem (2,726) had some difficulty when facing Aleksandr Lenderman (2,585) in the fourth game. Having defeated the American grandmaster twice at the 2015 Millionaire Chess Tournament, this time, when holding the black pieces, Quang Liem took the initiative to draw.
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Quang Liem is off to an impressive start in his first tournament since HDBank 2017 in March. Photo: Duc Dong. |
By the fifth game, which ended on the morning of July 3 (Hanoi time), Quang Liem was given the white pieces and he successfully defeated Jianchao Zhou (2,595), the only player to win all four games. Thus, after five out of nine games, the number one seed of the tournament is still leading, equal in points with grandmaster Yaroslav Zherebukh (2,642) and several other players. Meanwhile, the number two seed and also American chess prodigy, Jeffery Xiong, has 4 points.
With the Barcza System opening (the opposite of the Indian Defense), Quang Liem castled early, before deploying his pieces. Meanwhile, the Chinese player could not hide his desire to draw when he proactively exchanged the Queen on the 10th move. There were times when Jianchao even had a slight advantage, forcing Quang Liem to produce two pairs of stacked pawns (b2-b5 and e2-e3). However, the player from Ho Chi Minh City skillfully turned this burden into an advantage, and gradually regained the game.
The turning point of the game came when Black made a fatal mistake on 29…e5. Jianchao wanted to exploit the rook advantage on d7 and d8, but he failed to anticipate 30.Bh3. White now controlled the powerful diagonal c8-h3, not only breaking up the black rook combination, but also taking the black pawn on e5 with 31.dxe5.
Unable to maintain control after losing a pawn, Jianchao was impatient to reclaim it with 31…Re8. The Chinese grandmaster probably did not expect that to be his last move in the game, because after 32.Rc3, Black surrendered. Jianchao could not avoid losing another pawn on a7 after the rook exchange.
Having gone more than half of the journey smoothly, the biggest challenges are still waiting for Quang Liem. Vietnam's number one player will start the sixth game at 10pm today, Hanoi time.
Minutes of the match between Le Quang Liem vs Jianchao Zhou: 1.Nf3 d5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 c5 4. 0-0 g6 5.c4 Bg7 6.cxd5 Nxd5 7.Nc3 0-0 8.Qa4 Nb6 9.Qh4 e6 10.d3 Qxh4 11.Nxh4 Nc6 12.a4 Nd4 13.Be3 Rd8 14.Nf3 Nc2 15.Rac1 Nxe3 16.fxe33 Bh6 17.Kf2 Nd7 18.g4 b6 19.g5 Bg7 20.d4 Ba6 21.Rfd1 Rac8 22.Nb5 Bxb5 23.axb5 Kf8 24.Ra1 Rc7 25.h4 Ke7 26.Rd3 Nb8 27.Ra4 Rcd7 28.Kg3 cxd4 29.exd4 e5 30.Bh3 Rc7 31.dxe5 Re8 32.Rc3 1-0 |
According to VNE
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