Quang Liem to the top of his career
Quang Liem is playing sublime at Biel Grandmaster's standard chess content, with four wins in five games and the same performance as a player with Elo 2,944. After five games, he added 13.3 Elo, bringing the current multiplier to 2,741.3, the highest of his career. Previously, his highest Elo whether by FIDE or by instantaneous coefficient was only 2,739 in 2017.
Not only reaching the peak of his career in Elo, Quang Liem also reached the highest FIDE rank, 16th in the world, above such players as Maxim Vachier-Lagrave, Leinier Dominguez, Alexander Grischuk or Jan-Krzysztof Duda. Before attending Biel Grandmaster 2023, his highest position was 20 FIDE.
Quang Liem's results are even more impressive because he hasn't played standard chess for a year. The number one player in Vietnam must play this tournament if he does not want to be removed from the FIDE ranking table after 12 months of not playing. He was invited to the tournament after impressing last time with the championship.
In the remaining two games against Jules Moussard and David Navara, Quang Liem can enter the Top 15 in the world if he wins one and draws one game or more. If he can do that, he also has a great chance to successfully defend the championship.
The Biel Grandmaster consisted of eight invited players with Elo averaging 2,699, and seven of them were or are Super Grandmasters. After five standard games, Quang Liem won against Bogdan-Daniel Deac, Bassem Amin, Arjun Erigaisi and Du, with a loss to Vincent Keymer in between.
The victory over Du was unexpected because the Chinese representative was the number one seed, once standing in the Top 10 in the world. Quang Liem also had to hold the black piece in this game, but prevailed from the beginning and won after 36 moves. At the end of the game, Quang Liem still had more than 38 minutes left unused, while Du had less than 10 minutes left.
Quang Liem has been the number one player in Vietnam for the past 15 years, since he surpassed Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son. Quang Liem won the world chess championship in 2013, or the Asian champion in 2019. The title he won the most was the HDBank international chess tournament with three championships in 2013, 2015 and 2017.
