Liem, 29, got 19 points in total, standing after Indian Viswanathan Anand with 19.5, at the Superbet Rapid & Blitz contest held in Romania November 4-11 as part of the 2019 Grand Chess Tour.
Armenian Levon Aronian and Russian Sergey Karjakin shared the top spot with 20 points.
This is the highest achievement ever for Liem at the Grand Chess Tour. His performance earned him 88 more Elo points for a total of 2,768 points. He also climbed 42 ranks and now stands 15th in the world in blitz chess.
Top 20 Blitz chess players in the world based on their Elo points. |
Liem also won prize money of $15,000 for his performance.
Created in partnership between the Saint Louis Chess Club (Sinquefield Cup) and Chess Promotions, Ltd. (London Chess Classic), the annual Grand Chess Tour was first held in 2015. The tournament is a circuit of international events, each demonstrating the highest level of organization for the world's best players.
Awarded the title of grandmaster by the International Chess Federation in 2006, Liem won the World Open 2019 in the U.S. in July.
In June, he won the Asian Continental Chess Championship in China and the Summer Chess Classic 2019 in the U.S.
His next international contest will be the Southeast Asian Games 30 in the Philippines on December 1-8.