Le Quang Liem breaks through at the World Chess Cup

Grandmaster Le Quang Liem made his first appearance in the 5th round of the 2025 Chess World Cup, surpassing his own best results in the 2013 and 2019 tournaments.

The only representative of Southeast Asian chess to participate in the 2025 World Cup, grandmaster Le Quang Liem (Elo 2,729) has been making a deep impression in the world's most prestigious chess tournament held in Goa, India.

Open up golden opportunities

Exempted from the first round, Le Quang Liem entered the World Cup from the second round as a seeded player in the world's Top 20. Not disappointing the expectations of fans, the only super grandmaster of Vietnamese chess had a performance that exceeded expectations.

Le Quang Liem defeated Baadur Jobava (Georgia, Elo 2,573), Jeffery Xiong (USA, 2,649) and Karthik Venkataraman (India, 2,579) in just two standard games. He has affirmed his stable performance and ability to finish the game very strongly.

Le Quang Liem's ​​decisive victory over reigning Indian champion Karthik Venkataraman in round 4 was highly appreciated by chess experts, especially the second standard game when he had to hold the black pieces. Le Quang Liem showed his endgame skills and incredible in-depth calculation ability, coming up with the strategic idea of ​​"pushing Pawn g6, Bishop g7 and Bishop e5" to gain a positional advantage, forcing his opponent to surrender after 68 moves.

In addition to individual achievements, the 2025 World Cup also has a particularly important meaning: Awarding 3 places to participate in the 2026 Candidates Tournament - the tournament to select the challenger for the world chess throne. The context of this year's tournament is really strange, not only did masters like Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana not participate, but even the top candidates like Gukesh Dommaraju, Anish Giri, Wesley So, Nodirbek Abdusattorov or Ian Nepomniachtchi also said goodbye very early, opening up a golden opportunity for Le Quang Liem and other top players.

Le Quang Liem overwhelmingly defeated Karthik Venkataraman in round 4. Photo: WC2025

The Classic War

According to the general assessment, Le Quang Liem is facing the opportunity to go straight to the semi-finals of the World Cup 2025 as the player with the highest Elo in his bracket. He is also a rare candidate who has not yet had a place in the Candidates Tournament through other official tournaments.

In round 5, Le Quang Liem will face Alexander Donchenko (Germany, Elo 2,641). This is a real "dark horse" who eliminated 4th seed Anish Giri (Netherlands) in round 3 and continued to defeat compatriot Matthias Bluebaum in round 4.

The match between Le Quang Liem and Donchenko is predicted by experts to be a classic battle between the class and stability of a Top 20 player and the rising fighting spirit of a potential player. Both have a whole day off to prepare for the highly anticipated confrontation on the afternoon of November 14 to determine a ticket to the quarter-finals.

With careful preparation and extensive international competition experience, Le Quang Liem is expected to continue to make his mark at this World Cup with anticipated victories. At that time, he will be closer to the goal of winning a ticket to the Candidates Tournament 2026.

Three consecutive victories have brought Le Quang Liem 35,000 USD (nearly 1 billion VND) in prize money. He has the opportunity to "pocket" the next attractive bonuses: 25,000 USD (round 5), 35,000 USD (quarter-finals), 50,000 USD (semi-finals) and 120,000 USD (champion).

Source: https://nld.com.vn/le-quang-liem-but-pha-o-cup-co-vua-the-gioi-196251113213706362.htm