Liem still in 11th place in Skilling Open rapid chess

The Vietnamese (Elo 2,744) played with black pieces in the first match of the day against Hikaru Nakamura, the champ of the 2020 Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix. The American attacked right from the start but the 29-year-old defended accurately and gradually took the upper hand to score a win.

A screen shot of the online match between grandmaster Le Quang Liem and American player Hikaru Nakamura during the ongoing Skilling Open.

But the Vietnamese grandmaster lost his second game to Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, earned 0.5 points after a tie game with India's Vidit Gujrathi and lost again to the U.S.’s Wesley So.

Liem garnered his second win for the day by edging out Russia’s Peter Svidler to bag another point.

He is currently ranked 11th place in the 16-player Swiss league, the same standing as his first day, with a total of 4.5 points which is 0.5 points lower than 8th place player Azerbaijani Teimour Radjabov.

The second day on Tuesday morning Hanoi time wrapped up with the Netherlands’s Anish Giri continues to top the chart with 6.5 points while Norway's Magnus Carlsen, the world champion, in third place with 6 points.

There are still time for Liem to make it to the top eight to qualify for the knock-out round. On the third day, he will face Russia's Ian Nepomniachtchi, Carlsen, Radjabov, Spain's David Antón Guijarro and Iran's Alireza Firouzja.

According to the tournament format, the time control is 15 minutes per player for the whole game. The players get 10 seconds added to the clock for every move they make.

The event, which ends December 1, is part of a series of 10 online tournaments in the Champions Chess Tour featuring the world’s elite players and has prize money of $1.5 million