Le Quang Liem attacks the world's top 10

Beautiful victory over the king of chess

Yesterday, September 17, Vietnamese chess fans were proud of Le Quang Liem's ​​resounding victory over the reigning world champion - chess king Ding Liren when the Vietnamese chess team faced the Chinese team in game 6 of the 2024 World Team Chess Olympiad.

In a situation where the Vietnamese chess team had to beat Ding Liren to help the Vietnamese chess team draw with the third-seeded Chinese team, Le Quang Liem confidently deployed his playing style. When the opportunity came in the endgame, the number 1 Vietnamese player took full advantage, forcing chess king Ding Liren to proactively drop the flag and shake hands to congratulate Quang Liem. "This is definitely one of the biggest victories in my career. It's great to beat the reigning world champion and, more importantly, we drew with the championship candidate China," Quang Liem shared.

Le Quang Liem (right) in the game he won against chess king Ding Liren

The number 1 player in Vietnam also said that starting in 21st place and not being highly rated at the 2024 Olympiad helped the Vietnamese players feel comfortable, playing and enjoying their games. That was also part of the reason why he and his teammates got good results. The performance beyond expectations of Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son and Le Tuan Minh also added motivation and determination to Le Quang Liem when sitting at the number 1 table for the main players, from which he had a beautiful victory against the reigning world champion Ding Liren.

Reaching the pinnacle of your career

In recent years, Le Quang Liem has been busy with his work as head coach of the Webster University chess team (USA) and director of the SPICE Chess Academy, so he rarely participates in international tournaments. However, he still practices chess every day and has achieved impressive results in the tournaments he participates in. In July, the 33-year-old player excellently won the championship title for the third consecutive time at the Biel Chess Festival (Switzerland), thereby reaching the highest elo milestone in his career of 2,741 and also rising to 14th place in the world for the first time.

With an undefeated record (3 wins, 2 draws) at the 2024 Olympiad, Le Quang Liem is assessed by the computer to have the same chess strength as a player with an elo of 2,881. On the regularly updated rankings of the World Chess Federation (FIDE), Vietnam's No. 1 chess player also accumulated 8.9 more elo levels to reach a total elo of 2,749.9, and at the same time rose to 12th place in the world. The gap between Quang Liem and the world's 10th ranked player is only 1 elo level and the chance for him to enter this top for the first time is very high. However, he also faces a big challenge because, being ranked at the top of the Olympiad, the Vietnamese team will have to face strong opponents. For example, in game 7 taking place today, Quang Liem and his teammates will face the Iran team, the No. 10 seed. To aim for a high overall ranking, the Vietnamese team must overcome all strong teams. For Quang Liem to enter the world top 10, he must also achieve good results against all the opponents he will face in the future.

At the age of 33, with more than 20 years of pursuing chess and achieving many achievements, Le Quang Liem no longer faces great pressure in top matches. He encourages himself to try his best, enjoy each game and not put pressure on results. That is why Quang Liem shared that in addition to competing, he also "looked" to see if there were any potential players who wanted to compete to improve their chess skills and study at university in the US, then he would bring them to his team.

The World Chess Olympiad is considered the Olympics of the intellectual sport of chess. The best result that the Vietnamese chess team has ever achieved is 7th place in 2012 and 2018. The tournament is played according to the Swiss system with 11 games, the winning team gets 2 points, a draw gets 1 point, and a loss gets 0 points. After 6 games, Le Quang Liem and the Vietnamese team are undefeated (5 wins, 1 draw), temporarily ranked second after India.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/le-quang-liem-tan-cong-vao-top-10-the-gioi-185240917153553457.htm