Le Quang Liem and teammate Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son are Vietnamese representatives at the FIDE World Cup in Russia (Photo: FIDE)

Vietnam’s No 1 Grandmaster Liem (Elo 2708) who is seeded No 22 will play Aleksej Aleksandrov of Belarus (Elo 2577) in the first round.

His teammate Grandmaster Son (Elo 2638) will meet stronger opponent Kirill Alekseenko (Elo 2671) of the hosts. Son is seeded No 80 while Alekseenko is No 49.

The favourites for the tournament are Ding Liren of China, world No 3, Anish Giri of the Netherlands, world No 4 and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave from France, world No 7.

This year's knock-out tournament has lured 128 players competing in seven rounds. In matches from round one to six, athletes will compete in two classical games while the bronze-medal and final matches on October 4 consist of four games.

If score is a draw, they will play tie-break games to identify the winner.

The finalists of the tournament will qualify for the Candidates Tournament for the World Chess Championship 2020.

The total prize money is 1.6 million USD, with the winner walking away with 110,000 USD.

In the previous World Cup in 2017 in Tbilisi, Georgia, Armenian Grandmaster Levon Aronian took the top position for the second time in his career.