Quang Liem defeated Chinese player, keeping 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 trouble when he had to face Aleksandr Lenderman (2,585) in the fourth game. Having defeated the American grandmaster twice at the 2015 Millionaire Chess Tournament, this time when he had to hold the black pieces, Quang Liem took the initiative to draw.

Quang Liem is off to an impressive start in his first tournament since HDBank 2017 in March. Photo: Duc Dong.

In 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 the 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 Queens on the 10th move. There were times when Jianchao even had a slight advantage, forcing Quang Liem to produce 2 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.

According to VNE