Vietnam GM at disadvantage in Chessable Masters final

By Hoang Nguyen   August 8, 2021 | 12:14 am PT
Vietnam GM at disadvantage in Chessable Masters final
Le Quang Liem (R) and Wesley So competed in the final of Chessable Masters on August 8, 2021. Photo courtesy of Chess24.
Le Quang Liem faces an uphill task in taking the final of the Chessable Masters to a tiebreak after losing to American grandmaster Wesley So on the first day.

Before the final began Sunday, Liem, 32nd in world ranking, said facing So, world number nine, would be "a great challenge." He had lost both his recent encounters with the American.

So, who has been in great form at the tournament, beat Liem 2.5-0.5 on the first day of the final.

On the second day, Liem will need a few wins to take the final into the tiebreak, where two more games of Blitz chess will be played. If the score is still a draw, two players will enter an Armageddon game, where white has five minutes and black four, with a draw counting as a win for black.

Chessable Masters is the eighth tournament of the prestigious Champion Chess Tour, a 10-month long series of 10 online chess tournaments featuring top world players, with a prize pool of $1.5 million. All games are held on the website chess24.com and broadcast on streaming site Twitch. The series runs from Nov. 22, 2020 to Oct. 3, 2021.

Liem contested the first and fifth events in the series but failed to reach the final in both. At Chessable Masters, Liem beat French-Iranian chess prodigy Alireza Firouzja in the quarterfinal and Armenian grandmaster Levon Aronian in the semifinal to reach the final.

The winner of Chessable Masters pockets $30,000 while the runner-up gets $15,000.

 
 
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