Quang Liem at the peak of his career

Quang Liem is playing brilliantly in the Biel Grandmaster Standard chess event, with four wins in five games and a performance equivalent to a player with an Elo of 2,944. After five games, he has earned an additional 13.3 Elo, raising his current coefficient to 2,741.3, the highest of his career. Previously, his highest Elo, whether according to FIDE or by instantaneous coefficient, was only 2,739 in 2017.

Le Quang Liem (right) in a match with Du Uong Y in the fifth round of the Biel Grandmaster standard chess tournament on July 24, 2023.

Not only did Quang Liem reach the peak of his Elo career, he also reached the highest FIDE ranking, 16th in the world, above masters such as Maxim Vachier-Lagrave, Leinier Dominguez, Alexander Grischuk or Jan-Krzysztof Duda. Before attending Biel Grandmaster 2023, his highest position was 20th FIDE.

Quang Liem's ​​achievement is all the more impressive because he has not played standard chess for a year. Vietnam's number one chess player must play this tournament if he does not want to be removed from the FIDE rankings after 12 months of not competing. He was invited to the tournament after impressing in the previous tournament with the championship.

In the remaining two games against Jules Moussard and David Navara, Quang Liem can enter the world Top 15 if he wins one and draws one or more games. If he can do that, he also has a great chance of successfully defending his championship.

Biel Grandmaster consisted of eight invited players with an average Elo rating of 2,699, and seven of them were or are Super Grandmasters. After five standard games, Quang Liem defeated Bogdan-Daniel Deac, Bassem Amin, Arjun Erigaisi and Du, with a loss to Vincent Keymer in between.

The victory over Yu was a surprise because the Chinese representative was the number one seed, once ranked in the world's Top 10. Quang Liem also had to play black in this game, but dominated from the beginning and won after 36 moves. At the end of the game, Quang Liem still had more than 38 minutes left, while Yu had less than 10 minutes left.

Quang Liem has been the number one chess player in Vietnam for the past 15 years, since surpassing Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son. Quang Liem was the world blitz chess champion in 2013, and the Asian champion in 2019. His most prestigious title is the HDBank International Chess Tournament, winning three times in 2013, 2015, and 2017.

According to VnExpress