Le Quang Liem's path to becoming a world grandmaster
International Chess Festival is an annual chess event in the city of Biel (Switzerland), held since 1968. The festival consists of two tournaments: the grandmaster invitation tournament organized in a circular format and the grandmaster opening tournament. (MTO) is organized according to the Swiss system.
Last season, Vietnamese player Le Quang Liem was the champion, with a record of winning 4, drawing 1 and losing 2, standard chess content. This year, he is one of 8 grandmasters, with an average Elo of 2,699. Le Quang Liem continued to affirm his form after two standard chess games won in Biel. This achievement helped Liem accumulate 9 Elo, ranked fourth in Asia and climbed to 18th in the world, approaching a personal record coefficient of 2,739. This is the first time he has reached the highest position in his career.
Lam Minh Chau, coach of the Vietnamese Chess team, who has been with Le Quang Liem for nearly 20 years, said that recently, Liem has changed his playing tactics with a liberal, comfortable, double-playing style. aggressive attack, creating opportunities for both themselves and the opponent, instead of the solid play and safe game as before.
Mr. Chau said that this contributed to helping Liem achieve the "sweet fruit" today. "However, there are still five more standard chess games for the defending champion of the International Chess Festival to confirm their performance," said Chau.
Le Quang Liem is the number 1 player in Vietnam. Liem came to chess quite early, he won two silver medals at the world youth chess tournament aged 10 and 12 (2001 and 2003), the champion of the under-14 chess world championship in 2005, gold medal. 2006 Asian Under-16 Chess Championship and several gold medals at the Southeast Asian regional level. Recently, Liem continues to affirm his talent and bravery with such achievements as: individual silver medal at Chessable Masters 2021, individual silver medal at Oslo Esports Cup 2022, 2 gold medals and 1 silver medal at SEA Games 31. He is currently the Director. SPICE Chess Academy (USA), and head coach of the Webter University chess team (the university is in the Top 4 for chess in the US).
The tournament was held for the first time in 2011, HDBank has been a companion since the first season. In November 2021, this unit signed an agreement with the World Chess Federation (FIDE) and the Vietnam Chess Federation (VCF) on accompanying the international chess tournament in the next 10 years (2022-2031). "This shows our strong commitment to the tournament in particular and the world chess movement in general," said a representative of HDBank.
