Grandmaster Le Quang Liem

The Vietnamese star disappointed fans in the opening rounds of the tournament with his five draws and only two wins against lower-rated opponents, which saw his elo rating drop by 11.8 points.

However, Liem then produced a stunning comeback in the latter part of the tournament, taking three consecutive victories to reclaim 10.6 elo points and make the shortlist of the top seven performers overall with 7.5 points each.

Due to his inferior auxiliaries, Quang Liem was disqualified for the knockout stage, which was open to the four players who reached a top score of 7.5 and had the best auxiliaries. The final showdown was between the tournament’s top two seeds, Levon Aronian and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. They drew the two scheduled rapid games and again in the first blitz game. Finally, Aronian managed to win the second blitz game to clinch the overall victory.

GM Quang Liem left the tournament with an elo rating of 2735.8, which was enough for him to climb to 20^thposition in 2700chess.com’s world standings. This is a historic milestone for Liem himself and for the Vietnamese chess as a whole, as for the first time ever, a Vietnamese chess master has cleared a path into the world’s top 20 players.

Following his Tradewise Gibraltar campaign, Liem will participate in the Aeroflot Open tournament in Russia this month before attending the HDBank Cup International Chess Tournament in Hanoi this March.

The latest world chess rankings on 2700chess.com.