Le Quang Liem defeated Jianchao Zhou in the fifth round of the World Open 2017 chess tournament in the US on July 3.

Liem is Vietnamese top seed player of the event and has Elo rating of 2726, while his Chinese rival has Elo rating of 2595.

With this result, Liem sits atop the Open category with 4.5 points.

Earlier, Liem easily beat Robby Adamson of the US (Elo 2212) Pavel Blatny of Czech Republic (2394) and Andrew Tang of the US (2461). He met a little bit of difficulty when facing American grandmaster Aleksandr Lenderman (2585) in the fourth round and tied with him.

The Annual World Open will close on July 5 at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown.

The event has a prize of US$225,000.

After this event, Liem, who graduated from Webster University with a BSc in Finance and a Ba in Management, will take part in the World Cup in early September in Batumi, Georgia and the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in Turkmenistan at the end of September.

VNS