VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam’s number one chess player, Le Quang Liem, and his teammates from Webster University were recently crowned with the championship at the President's Cup chess tournament, which took place on April 5-6.

Le Quang Liem (fourth from right) and his team.

The President's Cup, also known as the Final Four of College Chess, is a chess tournament that takes place in the first week of April every year. It brings together four American universities, all with strong chess programs.

The four top teams of the Inter-American Chess Tournament are allowed to compete at this event. Webster University's chess team is the defending champion of the Inter-American Chess Tournament 2014, which was held this January with the participation of 42 chess teams from 20 universities of USA and Canada.

Webster University’s chess team is very strong, with an average Elo of over 2,700, equivalent to the level of a national chess team. The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of chess players.

This is the 14th President's Cup. In the 13 previous tournaments, the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) won the cup six times, followed by the University of Texas (Dallas) four times, Texas Tech University with two wins and Webster University with one.

This year’s tournament was held at the New York Athletic Chess Club with the participation of teams from Webster, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Texas Tech, and the University of Illinois.

With a strong lineup including Le Quang Liem, So Wesley (Philippines), George Meier (Germany), Ray Robson (USA), Anatoly Bykhovsky (Israel) and Fidel Corrales (Cuba), led by renowned coach Sulsan Polga, the Webster chess team performed exceptionally. They beat Illinoins 4-0, University of Maryland 3-1 and Texas Tech 3-1.

Webster University tallied 9.5 points to win the championship. Texas Tech was the runner up with seven points. U. Maryland ranked third with five points and Illinois ended in last place with 2.5.

After three games at this tournament, Liem added 2.2 points to his Elo. With his current Elo rating of 2,712, Liem has jumped by three spots to the position of 34th best chess player in the world.

Nam Nguyen