Quang Liem surpasses many super grandmasters
Vietnam's number one player participated in this tournament as the second-placed player out of three players who had to play in the qualifying round.
This was a success for Quang Liem as well as Vietnamese chess becausegThis year's World Blitz Chess Championship is open to only the top 16 players in the world. The participants include the top 9 players in the world, the 2011 defending champion, 2 spots for the host country, one spot assigned by the World Chess Federation, and 3 spots for players participating in the qualifying round.
In just 2 days, July 9 and 10, 16 players had to compete in 30 games according to the Swiss system, each game lasting 3 minutes with 2 seconds accumulated from the first move. At the end of the half-way stage, Le Quang Liem had won 7 points and ranked 10/16.
Quang Liem could have achieved a higher ranking if he had not lost to his weaker opponent Viktor Bologan.
In the remaining 15 games, Quang Liem (elo 2693) played better and better. In game 24, Quang Liem took the white pieces and went first and defeatedMamedyarov (elo 2726). In game 25, Quang Liem played with the black pieces and had to face the 22-year-old Norwegian chess genius Carlsen Magnus.
Not surprisingly, Quang Liem was easily defeated by the world's number one player (elo 2837) with the black pieces going first. In game 26, with the advantage of going first with the white pieces, Quang Liem defeated Vassily Ivanchuk.(elo 2764).Game 27, holding the black pieces to go later, Quang Liem continued to surprise when he defeated Peter Svidler (elo 2741).
In game 28, with the advantage of holding the white pieces to go first, the Vietnamese player had the advantage of holding the white pieces to go first but was defeated by his weaker opponent Viktor Bologan (elo 2556), thereby losing a valuable opportunity to stay close to the top. Not giving up, in the penultimate game, holding the black pieces to go last, Quang Liem defeated Nikolai Chadaev (2605) to get 16.5 points, entering the top 5.
In the final game, the advantage of holding the white pieces first did not help the number one Vietnamese player defeat Veselin Topalov (2752). The defeat against the Bulgarian player caused Liem to drop 2 places on the rankings and accept 7th place out of 16 players participating in the tournament, 0.5 points behind the 5th ranked player Demitry (elo 2700).
It was a pity for Quang Liem in the last games when he missed many opportunities to have a better result, but that was also a success for Quang Liem when he knew that there were 7 super grandmasters in the world with high elo ranked behind Liem.
According to Thethaovanhoa.vn - DT
