Vietnamese Grandmaster Le Quang Liem ranked fourth in the Romania Grand Tour which concluded in Bucharest on 11 November.

Vietnamese Grandmaster Le Quang Liem (Photo: VNA)

Liem had total points of 19 to finish fourth overall, behind Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin (20 points) and Viswanathan Anand (19.5 points).

He outplayed Anton Korobov (Ukraine) in his first blitz match to move within only half a point from the top spot of the standings, before losing the next two against Sergey Karjakin (Russia) and Levon Aronian (Armenia).

The following four games saw the Vietnamese player draw twice with Viswanathan Anand (Indian) and Vladislav Artemiev (Russia) and lose twice against Wesley So (the Philippines) and Anish Giri (Netherlands).

The next two successive wins against Fabiano Caruana (US) and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan) were not enough to bring Liêm the top of the table.

With this result, Liem won a cash prize of 15,000 USD. He also earned 88 additional Elo rating points, lifting him to 15^th position in the FIDE’s blitz world rankings with an Elo rating of 2,768.

Following this event, the top Vietnamese player will focus on the goal of earning a gold medal at the upcoming 30^th Southeast Asian Games 2019 in the Philippines.

(Source: VNA)