Quang Liem was invited to attend the Grand Chess Tour

Quang Liem will compete with nine other Super Grandmasters, including Fabiano Caruana, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Wesley So, Richard Rapport, Leinier Dominguez, Hikaru Nakamura, Sam Shankland, Peter Svidler and Jeffery Xiong.

All 10 participating players had a standard Elo of over 2,700, in August 2021, in which Quang Liem ranked lowest in the world at 32nd place. And Caruana, Mamedyarov, So and Rapport are in the top 10 in the world.

This is the first tournament that Quang Liem has played in front of the chessboard since the World Cup at the end of December 2019 in Moscow, Russia. There, Quang Liem ranked 13th in fast chess and 38th in blitz chess.

The St Louis fast chess tournament is the fourth stage of the five Grand Tour stages in 2021, also the first time Quang Liem, Dominguez, Nakamura, Shankland and Xiong have been invited. All five of these players live in the US, of which only Quang Liem does not have this nationality.

10 players will play a quick round robin, three games a day, from August 11 to August 13. For the last two days they played two rounds of blitz chess, nine games a day. Competition days start at 3pm, St Louis time, ie 3am the next morning, Hanoi time. Each game won quickly two points, draw one point. If you win, you’ll get one point for a win, and 0.5 for a draw.

The prize fund of the St Louis fast chess tournament is 150,000 USD, of which the first person receives 37,500 USD. The prize money gradually decreases until the last place is 6,000 USD.

Grand Chess Tour started in 2015, in which Chess King Magnus Carlsen won twice in 2015 and 2017. Wesley So, Nakamura and Dinh Lap Nhan topped in 2016, 2018 and 2019. Grand Tour 2020 was canceled due to Covid. -19 and the 2021 tournament without Carlsen because he is preparing for the game to defend the Chess throne at the end of 2021.

The last leg of the Grand Tour is called the Sinquefield Cup – a standard chess tournament that also takes place in St Louis. Quang Liem has not yet received an invitation to participate in that award. Previously, Quang Liem twice attended the Grand Tour, in the St Louis 2017 and Superbet 2019. Quang Liem’s ​​prize money in those two prizes combined is $ 25,000.

Xuan Binh