VietNamNet Bridge – Having a lucky victory against Vazquez Igarza Renier (2565), Le Quang Liem has narrowed the distance to the leading group to half a point. However, his opportunity to touch the championship cup is very fragile.




In round 9, facing the opponent whose Elo is 140 less and who had never encounter any great grandmaster, Quang Liem still met many difficulties in breaking the enemy’s stronghold. He won the game after nearly 100 moves.

With this victory, Quang Liem is only 0.5 points behind the leading group of 7.5 points, including Nikita Vitiugov (rating performance or RP 2839), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (RP 2805), and Nigel Short (RP 2738).

There are other six players who also have 7 points like Liem but Liem ranks fourth for higher sub-indices.

In this tournament, the sub-index in consideration is the Rating Performance (performance at the event). Quang Liem’s RP is 2795, followed by Michael Adams (RP 2760).

In the last round, Quang Liem will be holding the white chessmen in the match against Sandipan Chanda (2590).

Although his Elo is 100 less than Liem, it will be difficult for Liem to win in this game. At this tournament, the Indian player has not been defeated yet. He also had a draw in the game against David Navara (2710) in the eighth round and defeated Alexei Shirov (2708) in the ninth round.

In the past, Quang Liem and Sandipan Chanda clashed for five times, with two draws and three wins for the Indian player.

According to the rules of the Gibraltar Chess Festival, if there are four top players with the same point, the organizers will hold rapid chess play-off to pick out the champion with the prize worth £20,000. If there are more than four players in the top group, the top four will be selected based on their sub-index.

Compiled by Nam Nguyen