Quang Liem refused to attend the Sinquefield super prize

On August 17, the organizers of the Sinquefield Cup announced the names of 10 players participating, including Fabiano Caruana, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Wesley So, Richard Rapport, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Jeffery Xiong, Peter Svidler, Leinier Dominguez, Sam Shankland and Dariusz Swiercz. The average Elo of these 10 players is 2,742.

According to the research of VnExpress, the organizers invited Quang Liem to attend right before the St. Louis blitz tournament. But the number one player in Vietnam could not attend because he was busy training the chess team at Webster University, in the city of St Louis, Missouri, USA. He has accepted this job since April 2021, and the US is entering the new admission season.

The last time Quang Liem played standard chess was October 2019, at Grand Swiss – the open chess tournament is said to be the strongest in history, when he stood at eighth place. And the last time Quang Liem was invited to the round-robin standard chess tournament was at the Summer Chess Classic in June 2019, when he won.

Quang Liem has three times attended a tournament in the prestigious Grand Chess Tour system, but all of them were in fast-paced chess. He had never competed in the standard chess tournament of the Grand Tour.

The Sinquefield Cup is the final leg of the Grand Chess Tour, taking place from August 18 to August 28, also at St Louis. 10 players compete in a round-robin one-time round, with a prize fund of 325,000 USD, more than double the St Louis fast tournament – where Quang Liem finished fifth and received 12,500 USD. The leader of the Sinquefield Cup receives $90,000, the prize money gradually decreases to the 10th person, which is $10,000.

The first round of the Sinquefield Cup will take place from 3:00 am on August 18, Hanoi time, including a match between two world top 10 players, So and Mamedyarov.

Xuan Binh