Top Vietnamese chess players compete at World Cup
Hanoi (VNA) - Top Vietnamese chess players Le Quang Liem and Nguyen Ngoc
Truong Son are competing at the FIDE World Cup 2019 which began in the town of
Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, on September 10.
Vietnam’s
No 1 Grandmaster Liem (Elo 2708) who is seeded No 22 will play Aleksej
Aleksandrov of Belarus (Elo 2577) in the first round.
His teammate Grandmaster Son
(Elo 2638) will meet stronger opponent Kirill Alekseenko (Elo 2671) of the
hosts. Son is seeded No 80 while Alekseenko is No 49.
The favourites for the
tournament are Ding Liren of China, world No 3, Anish Giri of
the Netherlands, world No 4 and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave from France, world
No 7.
This year's knock-out
tournament has lured 128 players competing in seven rounds. In matches
from round one to six, athletes will compete in two classical games while the
bronze-medal and final matches on October 4 consist of four
games.
If score
is a draw, they will play tie-break games to identify the winner.
The
finalists of the tournament will qualify for the Candidates
Tournament for the World Chess Championship 2020.
The total
prize money is 1.6 million USD, with the winner walking away with 110,000 USD.
In the previous World Cup in 2017 in Tbilisi, Georgia, Armenian Grandmaster Levon Aronian took the top position for the second time in his career.-VNA