VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam’s top chess player Le Quang Liem remains unbeaten at the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund, Germany, after drawing with Georg Meier of the host country in the first match of the second round on July 27.

Quang Liem defeats world’s tenth chess player

Quang Liem gets four draws at Sparkassen

Liem, the world number 27 with an Elo rating of 2,715, remains in second place with 3.5 points after five draws and a win behind Vladimir Kramnik (Russia - the world number 5), who is on five points.

Defending champion Rusland Ponomariov (Ukraine, the world number 10) is in third place with three points followed by Anish Giri (the Netherlands) with 2.5 points, and Georg Meier and Hikaru Nakamura (USA) with 2 points each.

The Sparkassen Chess-Meeting takes place at Dortmund from July 21 through 31. It is an elite chess tournament held every summer in Dortmund, Germany.

Dortmund is an invite-only event, and only the strongest grandmasters are invited. The exception is that one slot at Dortmund is awarded to the winner of the annual Aeroflot Open in Moscow, a tournament that anyone with an Elo of at least 2550 is welcome to enter.

The tournament is usually played in a round-robin or double round-robin format.

At the last year’s Sparkassen, Vietnam’s Liem finished second after Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine and in the same year, became the first Southeast Asian to win the Aeroflot Open, the world's most difficult open chess event, twice in a row.

PV