A true chess champion

Vietnam’s Le Quang Liem shows the stuff he is made of.

IF a champion is someone who has won a competition, how would you define a true champion? To me, it’s very easy: a true champion is one who successfully defends a title won in the previous competition.

There aren’t many such champions around but one that comes to mind in recent chess history is Vietnam’s leading grandmaster, Le Quang Liem.

Le is 20 years old. At this age in chess, one may be considered a veteran at the game already. In 2005 when Le was 14, he became the Under-14 world youth chess champion. In 2006 and 2008, he played in the Vietnamese national team at the Chess Olympiads.

Impressive: Vietnam’s leading grandmaster, Le Quang Liem.

In February last year, he was a joint winner of the Moscow open tournament and he then immediately followed up this performance with an equally impressive victory at the ninth Aeroflot open chess tournament in Moscow.

So we know that Le is capable of winning some pretty strong chess tournaments. But is he a true champion? By my reckoning, yes. Just last month, he repeated his feat at the 10th edition of the Aeroflot open. Although technically, Le and two other players finished with equal points at the top, the Vietnamese was adjudged the winner on a better tie-break.

Despite being the defending champion, Le did not enter the tournament as the top seed. Indeed, he was over-shadowed so much by the higher-ranked players that he started this tournament only as the 19th seed.

The top seed was the Russian-born American grandmaster, Gata Kamsky, and then there were also Sergei Movsesian, Dmitry Jakovenko, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Nikita Vitiugov who dominate the world chess ranking list.

But the chess goddess can sometimes smile on the underdogs and in this case, she smiled on Le. While the seeds above him fell off one by one, he played steadily to gain ground on his rivals. He was helped by great results in his first four games which he won, and one of them, in the fourth round, was against no other than Kamsky himself.

Le Quang Liem (2664) – Gata Kamsky (2730)

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Qb3 e6 5.Nc3 Nbd7 6.Bf4 a5 7.cxd5 exd5 8.e3 Nb6 9.Bd3 Bg4 10.Ne5 Bh5 11.0-0 a4 12.Qc2 Bg6 (There is nothing to recommend about Black’s opening strategy in which he has lost time with his rook pawn, knight and bishop. White has a good lead in piece development and he now takes aim at Black’s uncastled king. But first, White strikes to open up the centre.) 13.e4 dxe4 14.Nxe4 Nxe4 15.Bxe4 Be7 (It is a bit too late for this move. Here’s a little combination which should not be too difficult to spot.) 16.Bxc6+ bxc6 17.Qxc6+ Nd7 (17…Kf8 18.Qxb6 Qxb6 19.Nd7+ and White will be two pawns up.) 18.Nxg6 (18.Nxd7 does not regain the piece as Black plays 18…Rc8 first.) 18…hxg6 19.Rfe1 0-0 (This is not castling into safety.) 20.Bc7 Nb8 (20…Qe8 21.d5) 21.Bxd8 (Or 21.Qxa8 Qxc7 22.Qxa4 with rook and three passed pawns for two pieces in an endgame.) 21…Nxc6 22.Bxe7 Nxe7 23.Rxe7 Rfd8 24.Rd1 a3 25.b3 Rac8 26.Kf1 Rd5 27.Rd2 (Black sees the light; the game is lost for him.) 1-0

After this win, Le took two draws before winning in the seventh round. Then disaster struck in the eighth round. He lost to Ivan Cheparinov and thereby allowed the Bulgarian grandmaster to level up with him on equal points. But this was as far as Cheparinov could go. In the final round, he succumbed to a bout of chess blindness and lost.

In the meantime, Le assured himself of the top prize by drawing his game, knowing that any one else that finished with the same points would lose out on the tie-break.

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