Vietnamese Grandmaster Lê Quang Liêm. — Photo news.zing.vn

HÀ NỘI — Vietnamese Grandmaster Lê Quang Liêm ranked fourth in the prestigious chess event, Superbet Rapid & Blitz in Romania on Monday.

Liêm had total points of 19 to finish fourth overall, behind Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin (20 points) and Viswanathan Anand (19.5 points).

Liêm outplayed Anton Korobov (Ukraine) in his first blitz match to move within only half a point from the top spot of the standings, before losing the next two against Sergey Karjakin (Russia) and Levon Aronian (Armenia).

The following four games saw the Vietnamese player draw twice with Viswanathan Anand (Indian) and Vladislav Artemiev (Russia) and lose twice against Wesley So (the Philippines) and Anish Giri (Netherlands).

The next two successive wins against Fabiano Caruana (US) and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan) were not enough to bring Liêm the top of the table.

With this result, Liêm pocketed US$15,000 in prize money. He also earned 88 additional Elo rating points, lifting him to 15th position in the FIDE’s blitz world rankings with an Elo rating of 2,768.

Following this event, Liêm will focus on the goal of earning a gold medal at the upcoming 30th Southeast Asian Games 2019 in the Philippines. — VNS