Photo by IM Georgios Souleidis
Liem advances to second place
July, 21 2010 09:15:06
HA NOI — Vietnamese Le Quang Liem continued to surprise at the Sparkassen Chess Meeting with his second win on Monday in Dortmund, Germany.
After his victory against Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine in the fourth round-one match a day earlier, he quickly managed to beat Peter Leko of Hungary and advanced to second, just a half point behind the league leader.
Liem shares his ranking with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan, the world No 6, who on Monday lost to Ponomariov. The Ukrainian now leads the tournament with 3.5 points.
The win against Leko revealed Liem’s excellent endgame technique. He gave his rival no escape route, despite his opponent’s ranking of number 16 in the world, a substantially higher position than Liem, who stands at 55th.
In the other game, former world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia defeated nine-time Sparkassen Chess Meeting winner Arkadij Naiditsch of Germany.
Kramnik, who started the tournament as a favourite, stands on 2.5 points, and is now in fourth place.
Meanwhile, Naiditsch and Leko are unexpectedly rooted to the bottom of the table with 1.5 points each. After half of the tournament, the grandmasters had a one-day break yesterday when they had a chance to view the city, meet local fans and participate in several raffles.
Play will resume today when Liem will play against Kramnik, the tournament’s top seed. His two defeated opponents Leko and Ponomariov will face each other, while Mamedyarov meets Naiditsch.
The Sparkassen Chess Meeting is an elite chess tournament held every summer in Dortmund. It is one of the four majors on the chess tournament circuit alongside Corus, Sofia and Linares.
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 2,550 is welcome to enter. Vietnamese Liem was invited this year after his impressive victory at the Aeroflot competition in February.
The tournament is usually played in a round-robin or double round-robin format. This year’s double round-robin games will be concluded on July 25. — VNS
Source: http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com
Wouldn’t be sad if Leko finishes last?
“In the other game, former world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia defeated nine-time Sparkassen Chess Meeting winner Arkadij Naiditsch of Germany.” Does Naiditsch know he has won Dortmund nine times? Mainstream journalists never get their facts right.
Yeah, they get their chess facts so wrong that I have to wonder how wrong all of the other mainstream stories probably are.